The Revenge of the Cybertronian Desk Jockeys
by Shockeye
Summary: When a Decepticon supply depot is invaded by greedy friendlies, the pencil-pushing, form-filing paperwork clerks of the war effort avenge themselves in the only way Decepticon administrative assistants can...! Story features mostly OCs, with the exception of three canon guys. No pairings, no slash, plenty of violence and assholery. G1.
1. Chapter 1: Lights Out

**Part 1: The Invasion of Base Targa-7**

By the time the Cybertronian War had spread out across the universe, being fought on other planets or by proxy planets, those non-aligned Neutral Cybertronians who had managed to escape the war just by being elsewhere, were thriving in rough little colonies on the outskirts of the local galaxy. These settlements were not solely Cybertronian of course; they shared their work and public spaces with other species and peoples, metallic and non, and in general got along rather peacefully. These colonies often took the form of space stations along major lanes of interstellar travel, or as way stations on remote planets or planetoids.

One of these Neutral stations was a solitary administration hub called Targa-7, which was conveniently located on the seventh of several moons orbiting a gas giant made up of heavy elements, hydrogen, and helium. In addition to being a paperwork factory, Targa-7 also included a small mining facility nearby devoted to siphoning the main planet for gases, later to be refined into H-energon, a type of old-fashioned energon substitute.

Targa-7 was also a well-kept secret, for it kept a low profile and was not worth much in the long view of things. But, sooner or later, someone was bound to follow one of numerous cargo transports to the station and discover that it was actually a secret Decepticon supply depot.

* * *

Corporal Rush was having a bad day.

It had all started in the middle of the night. Some afthole had driven one of the heavy transports from the cargo bay and smashed it into the side of the south wing barracks, causing at least one injury and forcing the other personnel to bunk on the floor of the second barracks next door.

Tired and unable to recharge properly, Rush had woken up on the floor of Epsilon barracks after being rudely tripped over in the early hours of the morning. After a lot of swearing and grumpy comments and groggy explanations, Rush then arrived at his office twenty cycles late to the tune of the bulky, high-shouldered Staff-Sergeant BigJaw delivering his usual diatribe on the ineffectiveness of other people.

"RUSHLIGHT!" BigJaw bellowed as he stabbed a finger over in Rush's direction. At that moment, Rush was already sprinting into the main office, trying to dodge the other cubicles en route to his own. Telecoms were blaring, the desk jockeys were already at work processing mountains of transfer data, and BigJaw was ready to begin his first round of abuse.

Rush nearly halted at the Staff-Sergeant's call, and slowed his run down to a jog when he realized that he had already been singled out. He winced.

"You worthless piece of scrap! Why the frag are you late? These forms are due in ten cycles, and then there's another batch coming in from Omicron-Three that'll take five of you to process by the end of today!" BigJaw was shouting. "Where is Twofist and Turbogear? Why is Tarball the only desk-greaser here?" he demanded, now jabbing his finger at the hapless Tarball, who was doing his best to look frantically busy.

Rush sidled in behind his desk and immediately sat down at his terminal. Before he could even call up his schedule, BigJaw was in his face.

"CORPORAL!" he bellowed again, causing Rush to startle. BigJaw slammed his large hands onto the desk, causing stacks of memory sticks and datapads to slide off onto the floor with a clatter. "All these forms are yours to finish in the next nine cycles! As soon as your other two boyfriends show up, they're going to start on the Omicron job! Now get to it or _it's the mines for you_!"

Rush cringed again as BigJaw pushed himself off the desk with another thump. Another stack of data sticks tumbled off onto the floor in the wake of Staff-Sergeant's departure.

In a moment, Rush was on his knees trying to collect the datapads and memory sticks before anyone else stepped on them. He tried not k steal a glance over at Tarball - a rather sticky individual with a considerable lack of personal hygiene - who was already staring furtively back at him. Rush scowled at him and hastily threw his belongings back onto his desk.

"Where the hell ARE Twofist and Turbogear," Rush muttered to himself, as he tried to arrange his datapads and disks in order. "They aren't in the same barracks as me, so I don't know what their excuse is."

"Twofist is down at the refinery selling Syk to the miners," Tarball whispered, leaning sideways in his seat. "He didn't say when he'd be back. And I dunno where Pervogear is."

Turbogear had an unfortunate reputation for dealing in shady materials as well, albeit a totally different kind from Twofist's wares. Rushlight made a face as he sat back down at his desk.

"Don't call him that," he sighed, with a roll of his optics.

"Why not? He's gross. I didn't know you liked him," Tarball sniffed. He wiped some stray lubricant leaking out from under his armpit.

Rush didn't even bother to conceal his own disgust. "I don't," he replied, as he tried to balance the stack of datapads scattered all over his desk. "But it's thanks to him I got transferred to this place."

"What? That afthole!" Tarball growled. "How could he do that to you?"

"No, it was a favour," Rush insisted. "You obviously haven't even heard of E-Stalsem before."

"Frag no."

"The trench planet. Ion storms, sulphuric acid rain, sub-orbital debris bombardment. It was miserable. It was Turbogear who got me out of that place. Now I actually get to sit at a desk doing something normal instead of... whatever."

Rush shrugged. Tarball at least seemed mollified, and leaned back in his seat again.

"This boring scrap job? I'd rather be out scragging Autobots myself," said Tarball, with a derisive sneer. "S'gotta be better than being yelled at by Staff-Sergeant Blowjob day in and day out."

Rush didn't say anything. As he played Jenga with his datapad stack, the entire tower tipped over and splayed out all over his desk again. Rush groaned in exasperation.

"Great, and now all of these are out of order... guess I'll start filing them first," he grumbled, and began sorting through the physical data.

The first job of the day to file were recruitment forms. Each form detailed the name and details of various individuals who were useful to the Decepticon cause, as well as their expected paygrade. There were also three different kinds of forms: yellow ones were from the Iota-Koracs system and therefore weren't technically Cybertronian, and therefore needed to be filed under Mercenary Resources to be sent to Personnel Redistribution Resources who would then delegate these non-payroll members to various station commanders who needed non-Cybertronian personnel for assorted proxy regiments. The pink ones were new Decepticon recruits fresh from Basic that needed to be graded by their respective squad commanders and then redistributed based on their scores. Those needed to be filed to PRR in Section Delta Four, which was located across the hall. And then the blue forms were transfer sheets for troops, and the green forms were transfer sheets for goods. The white transfers were for basic equipment, the off-white transfers were for vehicles, and the orange transfers were for energon transport.

Rush observed the unusually high stack of orange-lit data pads that were building up on the corner of his desk. Outgoing shipments were high this month.

But first... the forms for PRR. Rush bent forward and began scanning the new data into the system.

This was the backstage for the war, Rush knew. It was all... communications and orders and organized chaos. Somewhere out there, wherever the main front of the war was going on, soldiers were fighting and dying and screaming their intakes out for glory and the Cause, the Decepticon cause, and for Megatron. But that was so... far away. Elsewhere, life went on. Station commanders and battalion leaders and supply train coordinators had to send their acquisition requests somewhere, and someone had to respond to their needs. Someone had to take in all of that data and make sure things happened. This place, Targa-7, was where the true guts of the war churned.

Every cog in its place. Rush grumbled and continued his task.

Time passed. The clock on the wall, which displayed time in various systems and ran stock tickers from those same systems, gradually counted down the kliks, cycles, and mega-cycles...

And by the end of the third mega-cycle, Rush was buried under a pile of Twofist and Turbogear's Omicron files, fast asleep. Tarball, seated close by, had been listening to the snores for at least half a mega-cycle.

"RUSHLIIIGHT!" BigJaw's voice rang in Rush's audios like cannon fire. Rush sat bolt up right like he'd been shocked, optics wide.

"WHERE are your pathetic cube mates?" BigJaw demanded, as he thrust a wide finger at the two empty terminals beside Rush's desk. "WHY isn't the the Omicron job DONE? And WHY are you sleeping on COMPANY TIME?"

Rush had to wait a moment for the ringing to die down in his hearing receptors before he could even speak. "Sorry, sir," he muttered dazedly. "Didn't get to recharge last night, sir."

"RECHARGE IS FOR LOSERS!" BigJaw bellowed. "And THAT'S why you're here behind a desk, Corporal, instead of in the field like a PROPER Decepticon! Now FINISH that Omicron job in the next mega-cycle or you'll get worse than a desk you slag-eating, cogsucking, backended DRONE!"

And with that, BigJaw stomped away again, leaving Rush feeling distinctly winded. He wasn't about to tell the Staff-Sergeant where he belonged.

"You should... grab some energon or something, Rush," Tarball suggested.

Rush watched a small, many-legged, ferro-scab cybertick crawl down the side of Tarball's face, and shuddered. Wordlessly he left his seat and quickly navigated the massive cube-farm towards the closest energon-cooler.

The usual office wildlife was clustered around the energon cooler. There was Carbide the secretary, and with him was Artemia, a femmebot executive from upper management in Section Delta Five down the hall. There were some other office jockeys like Rush himself as well, but they didn't linger as they passed to and fro; they were too busy to stand around like some people.

As Rush approached, he could hear the vapid conversation already in progress.

"...the transport into Gamma barracks? Hilarious!" Carbide was chortling with a cup of energon in his hand. "It's a wonder she doesn't get fired. You know what they say about femmes, you can't trust one behind the wheel..."

"Zark off, Carbide. You're one to talk," Artemia laughed, with a flap of her hand. "Anyway, I can't wait for tomorrow. I've got twenty orns of vacation time to kill and I fully intend on getting away to Ion-Rho for a facelift. Now that Cybertron's in the smelter, where am I supposed to go for my annual makeover, honestly..."

Rush set his jaw and did his best to ignore the talk at the cooler as he plucked a cup from the dispenser beside them. He stood right between them and pushed the button to fill, and as he waited, the two gossip hounds continued talking right over him.

"Oh, I totally know get what you mean!" Carbide said with a roll of his optics. "Not that this rock is any better. I'd follow you to Ion-Rho in a heartbeat."

"You know, I'm almost glad Cybertron's in the compactor," Artemia sighed, as she sipped her energon. "Dull as it was, I just couldn't stand Autobot politics. It's all anyone ever talks about, even now! Primus, will you look at me, even I'm trying to sound all important and pretentious about it, ahaha...!"

Suddenly, a splash of energon erupted into Artemia's face. To Rush's mild surprise, he was holding a dripping, empty cup.

"Ex-CUSE me!" Artemia shrieked as she startled, optics wide as she stared down at the liquid energon dripping down the front of her chassis. "That was extremely uncalled-for!"

"Uh," Rush stammered. He hastily dropped the evidence and began backing away. "Oh look, the comm on my desk is beeping. Bye."

"What- get back here!" Artemia screeched as Rush hurried away back to his cubicle, where indeed, the comm on his desk really was beeping insistently for his attention.

Swiftly, Rush pushed the button. "Forms and Processing, Rushlight speaking," he said quickly, as he picked up the receiver. Out of the corner of his optic he could see Artemia and Carbide both storming down the aisles towards his terminal. "Uh huh. No, I, uh... the Omicron job is still here. Yes, just let me-"

Rush turned to stare at his desk, only to find the Omicron stack missing. Alarmed, he whipped around to look over at Tarball, whose desk was not any more cluttered than it was before.

"Tarball!" Rush snapped. "Where the hell did the Omicron files go?"

"Huh?" Tarball pulled his finger out of his audio receptor with a greasy pop. "Umm, someone just came along and took it. I thought you were done."

"What? I- scrag it," Rush snarled, with the receiver still held up to the side of his head. "Oh, er, sorry sir, not you. I'll... yes, I have them. They're still being entered. End of the day? In- uhh, I don't know if... that's not really enough time to..."

A shadow loomed over him. Rush recognized the silhouette falling across his desk, and braced himself.

"Rush-LIIIGHT!" Staff-Sergeant BigJaw boomed behind him. "Are you finished with those Omicron files yet?"

Rush clapped a hand over the comm receiver and carefully turned around. "They're, uh." His gaze darted around. "Section... Twelve has them, sir," he lied.

"YOU miserable cube-trash were supposed to have it done a mega-cycle ago!" BigJaw bellowed. "Where are Twofist and Turbogear?"

"I really don't know," Rush replied, wilting slightly.

"Well you'd BETTER FIND OUT!" BigJaw was now going distinctly red in the face, as though a volcanic reaction was going on behind his faceplate. "OR ELSE I'M GOING TO-"

Abruptly, all the lights and terminals in the office flickered and went out.


	2. Chaptr 2: In which the boss saves a life

_Fifty points to anyone who knows the origins of the word 'tarball'. ;) _

* * *

**Chapter 2: In which the boss saves a life**

The cubefarm went dead silent as darkness fell. All that became visible in the darkened cubicle offices now were a host of glowing optics, some vanity decals and alt-mode lights shining dimly. There was some puzzled shuffling, and some people groaned aloud. "Oh for Pit's sake..."

Suddenly, a dull, distant _thud_ reverberated through the walls and floor. The sound was quickly followed by muffled screaming from one of the offices a few doors down.

Rush's circuits ran cold.

The tension was palpable. In the dark, small sounds like shifting gears and twitching gyros became more pronounced. With a roaring _boom_, the ceiling and walls shuddered again, shaking dust from the pillar and arch supports. Terrified shrieks strained thinly from overhead.

"What was that?" someone whispered.

Through the open office door, the sounds of heavy footsteps could be heard running up the outer corridor. As large, bulky shadows flashed past the doorway, a small, glowing object was tossed in through the doorway and into the offices. Struck dumb and bemused - for nothing like this had ever happened in the history of Targa-7's existence - all the employees could do was watch stupidly as the object bounced off a desk and skittered across the floor, trailing tiny, dotted lines of flashing red lights. The lights flickered rapidly.

"What the-" BigJaw began, but someone was already yelling.

"GET DOWN!"

In a lightning nano-klik, Rush dove under his desk just as the thing detonated with a deafening blast. Rush's desk lurched as the shockwave ripped into the first two rows of terminals bolted to the floor, and sent Staff-Sergeant BigJaw sprawling backward across the surface of the desk. Huddled behind the relative safety of BigJaw's bulk, Rush just stared in mute horror as gooey, purple energon sprayed out over the edge of his desk overhead.

People howled in panic as those standing further back began racing for the emergency exits. However, their stampede was anticipated, so the fire doors slammed open before anyone could get to them. Then came the machine laser fire.

Cries of panic turned to dying scream as gunners mowed down the office workers. All around him, Rush could hear them scrambling in the dark to get past each other, climbing over furniture to escape, and then dropping abruptly as laserfire tore right through them.

Terrified, Rush clutched his head in his hands and pressed his face to the floor, reminding himself dimly that his desk was not so much cover as it was concealment, which meant that the sizzling hot laser bursts would pass through his desk like so much tinfoil. _Zark, zark-ZAPP-_

It took only a few cycles for the harsh shrilling of the laserfire to diminish, pausing only to erupt now and again in spurts. At every strangled cry, Rush imagined one of his coworkers twisting about at the impact in a shower of sparks and spattering fluid. Who was that? Was that Carbide? Was that Firestoker from accounting? Maybe that new intern, Jumpstarter? Did Artemia manage to get away...?

Rush just couldn't think. Today was officially the worst day ever.

"Zone Three cleared," a voice suddenly grunted from elsewhere in the main cubicle farm. "Pylon, Whetstone, I want you two to secure this area and then rendezvous with the rest of us in Zone Five. Is that clear?"

"Sir, I think this is just... accounting, or something. Buncha data entry types. I mean, look. That guy's wearing a tie."

"Doesn't matter. Everyone in this place is considered armed and hostile."

"Yeah, but... office workers?"

"Quit your whining, Pylon, and get to it! Everyone else, out, now!"

Footsteps shuffled out of the room, and soon everything was quiet again.

For a long time, Rush remained hunched over beneath his desk with his hands on his head, flattened to the floor. He imagined that the faint rattle he could hear was just his chassis shaking in fear, but the longer he listened, the more he realized it was coming from somewhere else. Cautiously he unfolded himself and crept out from beneath his desk...

Immediately he was met with the acrid smell of smoke and burnt powder, and the ozonous stink of spilled energon. He tried to wave away the clinging fog of smoke, but it was pointless, for the room was still dark. But what light was afforded by the sparking components of ruined terminals allowed him to guess at shapes in the dark, and what his imagination painted for him out of the silhouettes was probably worse than what was actually there.

The concussion grenade had ripped apart anyone standing near the entrance, along with furniture, flooring, and light fixtures. Thick spatters of energon dripped from the ceiling, glowing faintly. Everywhere else, bodies lay at awkward angles, half-draped over desks and office chairs, flung across one another, and all of them smashed and riddled with holes. Smoke and steam rose up from the fresh wounds of the newly dead, mingling with the muzzle smoke left behind by the attackers.

Now Rush was shaking. He backed away from his desk and turned around to see Staff-Sergeant BigJaw sprawled backwards over it with half a chair embedded into his face. The liquid coolant contents of his open braincase oozed over the desktop and onto the floor, and it took Rush a moment to realize that his hands and knees were covered in it; he had been kneeling in BigJaw's congealing coolant and internal fluids for the past several cycles and hadn't realized it.

And then there was that faint rattle again. Rush spun around, optics huge.

The rattle turned into a heavy clunk, and Rush watched as an arm fell out from behind a desk. He recognized the greasy palm; it was Tarball.

In an instant, Rush had scrambled over burnt, smoking debris and was on his knees next to Tarball's arm, which was fortunately still attached to its owner. But Tarball didn't look well. He lay with his back against the side of his desk, but his head tilted at a strange angle, and he was twitching.

"Tarball!" Rush whispered harshly as he crouched nearby. "Tarball, are you all right?"

"Urgk... algcch," Tarball gurgled. "Is... is there something on my face...?"

Rush just stared at him. "No, Tarball," he said quietly. Empty holes, several of them, stared back. "Nothing's there."

"Feels like it. Hey... hey, I'm shot," Tarball wheezed, moving his arm. He clutched at Rush's wrist, fingers closing over it like a vice. "I'm shot. They got me, Rushly. Got-got me. Just... just wanted to say-say-say..."

"I'll go get help!" Rush whispered back. "Just stay here, okay?"

"Say-say... say I haven't been-been the b-b-b-best-est-est persssson I could be-eeee," Tarball went on, slurring as his lipless mouth moved. "Haven't-haven't been a-a good Con, I mean, I just want-wan-ttt-eddd to run out into a battlefield with a gun and just die-ie-ie-die like a hero, but thissss is total bullscra-ag-"

"Tarball, shut up," Rush muttered, as he tugged at his arm for Tarball to let go. "I don't want to hear your life story, I just want to get out of here."

"Oh Primus, Rush, it's the Autobots, I just know it," Tarball moaned in defeat. "Just kill-kill me now! They hate us-us-us, they're gonna tie us up and drag us from the back of one of our own trans-trans-transports and then they'll take-take-take turns running us over-over-over-"

"Shut up," Rush hissed. "Shut up, shut up! Stop talking! Let me go already, or I swear to Primus I'll-"

"D-don't wanna die," Tarball began sobbing. As he tried to move, his head flopped forward onto his chest with a hard thunk. "Oh Primus, what was that? What's happening? I can't see! D-don't lemme die here, Rush! Don't go! Ohh- don't-"

Rush began to panic. He tugged on his arm, and then began trying to pry Tarball's fingers off his wrist. "Let go, Tarball! Leggo!"

"Gun-gun-gun in my desk drawer," Tarball was saying. "Drawer. Drawer. Drawer. Drrrr... use it to put me out of my misery...!"

A gun? Rush's gaze darted up towards the closed drawer just under Tarball's desk, and hesitated. Then he immediately snatched the drawer open, crammed his free hand into the mess of office supplies and datapad replacement screens until his fingers closed over something cool and metallic. Then he yanked it out, scattering plastic report covers, and found himself holding the muzzle of a small but practical-looking laser pistol.

"It's over man, it's over," Tarball moaned, as his head lolled about on his grease-slicked chest. "Just-ust shoot me, I-I-I don't wanna deal with-with BigJaw anymore... Primus, just let me go...!"

"No, YOU let me go!" Rush snarled at him, as he tried to bash Tarball's hand off his wrist with the butt of the laser pistol.

"Hey, Rush?" Tarball sniffed. "Don't I owe you fiiiive..."

The lights on Tarball's altmode chassis dimmed, sputtered, and went out. The remainders of his optics also went dark.

Rush went still. "Tarball...?" he whispered, but there was no reply. "Hey... you okay? Tarface?"

But there was no reply.

Rush swallowed the urge to moan in despair. Instead, he continued hammering at Tarball's fingers, which remained clamped around his wrist.

"Primus alive, even dead you can't let go of slag," he panted, as he tried to wedge the muzzle of the laser pistol in between the fingers. "Let go, Tarball...! Let... go...!"

Suddenly there was a bright flash, a sharp crack, and Rush fell over onto his back with a yowl. Immediately he scrambled up to sit upright with the laser pistol still in one hand, and his other hand freed! The only trouble was that he had accidentally shot off Tarball's arm, but the hand was still attached to his wrist, smoking with a faint bubbling noise.

"Frag!" Rush swore, as he set the muzzle of the laser pistol to the back of Tarball's dead hand.

There was a bright flash. A moment later, Rush was hurrying away from the desk and from Tarball's body, shaking stray fingers from his arm as he went.

He tried to keep down the rising bile in his throat. The smell, the carnage - it was E-Stalsem all over again.

What was going on? Was Tarball right? Were Autobots raiding the station? Rush could feel his fuel pump racing, and it was making his hands shake. Even his chassis was rattling - dammit, he thought he was over this - and this was just not happening, it couldn't be Autobots, it couldn't be...

In the dark, Rush's optics gleamed as he came to a stop near the open doorway, now abandoned by the invaders. So, two more troops were ordered to stay behind...?

His hand tightened on the coolant-slicked handle of Tarball's laser pistol, and the shaking gradually stopped.

It really was E-Stalsem all over again.


	3. Chapter 3: Whoops

**Chapter 3: Whoops**

Twofist held perfectly still as more footsteps rattled on past. Only after they had faded around the corner did he dare speak again.

"Three. No, maybe four," he whispered to his cohort.

Twofist's cohort, a blue-collar Con named Bugbear stepped out of the closet first, rifle out. Twofist sighed in relief.

"Primus above, if we ever have to hide in a closet like that again, YOU get to step in first...!" he growled, as he peeled himself off the back wall.

Bugbear shrugged. "I can't help it," he said nonchalantly, while Twofist plucked cleaning supplies off his backside. "I'm just big, okay?"

"You're enormous," Twofist spat, as he finally lurched out of the cleaning closet.

And it was true. Bugbear was not so much tall as he was wide, due to his altmode configuration being able to fold out only sideways. He was worse than a flier, who occasionally had tall wings, shouldermounts, or headgear to contend with. You couldn't walk down a hallway next to a bot like Bugbear.

"Just admit it, you stuck with me 'cause I'm basically walking cover," Bugbear said, gazing down at the smaller Twofist. "Newsflash for you: most of this is hollow. Good luck with that." He rapped on his chest piece, which rang back with an echo.

"Yeah, that's not the only bit that's hollow," Twofist grumbled. "Now c'mon, the airlock is this way. These damn Autobots have probably taken over the cargo bay and transport pads, so hopefully they've forgotten about the side exits."

"Funny how they found out about this place," Bugbear remarked, as he trotted along after Twofist down the darkened corridor. Only the emergency lights were on, lining the floor and casting the corridor in a weak, red glow. "From what Airbuzz said, they came pouring in through the emergency exits too."

"Did they? Frag it!" Twofist stopped dead in the corridor.

Bugbear, whose vision wasn't very good even with the lights on, stumbled into him.

"Ow, watch where you're going, fragface!" Twofist yowled.

"Sorry," Bugbear grunted. "What're you stopping for?"

"If they know where the exits are, then we're fragged," Twofist snarled, as he spun around to face the hulking Con. In the darkness, all he could see were a pair of apologetic orange optics. "Primus frag it, we should've stayed outside..."

"Airbuzz should've met us here," Bugbear murmured, glancing around. "You think they got 'im...?"

"No, or else we would've heard it. He must've found some better place to hide," Twofist muttered. "Okay, okay... gotta think..."

While Twofist muttered and anxiously paced back and forth, Bugbear kept a look out. The last he'd seen of Airbuzz, the flier had taken off down the hall the very second Twofist alerted them both to the presence of approaching soldiers.

"Where's security?" Bugbear commented, as he turned his gaze back down to Twofist. "I haven't heard a single alarm or anything. You think the Bots got 'em too?"

"Obviously!" Twofist threw his hands up. "I mean, the rent-a-cops that Feldspar's got on this place aren't exactly geniuses. We're a military facility! And guess who cut military defense out of the budget because they thought no one would ever think to attack this place...?"

"Feld...spar?" Bugbear ventured.

"That guy," Twofist growled. "I bet he sold us out. He hated this place anyway, out in the middle of skidfrag-nowhere..."

Suddenly, Twofist froze again. "Someone's coming!" he hissed. "Bugbear, take 'em out!"

"Where?" Bugbear turned around, but Twofist had already dragged him behind the corner to avoid being seen.

"Down there!" Twofist pointed to the end of the hall.

"Well, your hearing's better than mine... I can't see in the dark," Bugbear complained.

"Look, look, there they are! Just shoot!" Twofist punched Bugbear in the shoulder.

Bugbear, who was the only one of the two who knew how to fire a rifle properly, cocked his weapon and levelled it down at the hallway. And sure enough, Twofist's audial capabilities were on the mark; a pair of glowing optics wavered into view, just barely visible against the reddish backdrop.

"Breathe..." Bugbear whispered to himself, shoulders rising. "And fire." His finger tensed on the trigger.

Blam! The shape in the distance flinched, and then dropped to the floor.

"Great shot!" Twofist whispered harshly, slapping Bugbear on the back. "I'm gonna go loot the sucker, maybe he's got a pistol on him or something..."

"But I didn't fire yet," Bugbear mumbled, glancing over his shoulder at Twofist.

"What? Then who-" Twofist ducked back behind the corner and peered out more cautiously again.

A pair of wing mounts jogged into view, attached to a flier's frame. The figure knelt down next to the fallen mech, and immediately a struggle broke out. The downed figure obviously had not been shot very well, for he was reaching up to strangle the Con flier, and Airbuzz wasn't exactly a competent fighter, which was why he had been relegated to desk duty in the first place.

"Oh frell, it's Airbuzz," Twofist groaned. "Well, what're you waiting for? Go help him!" Twofist smacked Bugbear on the back of the head.

The two Cons came sprinting up the corridor just in time to find Airbuzz being strangled by a much smaller mech. When Twofist recognized his attacker, he burst out laughing.

"Rushly, is that you?"

"You-Matrixfragging-" Rush gargled in rage, with his hands wrapped around Airbuzz's neck. "Shot me-!"

"Primus alive! Are you all right?" Bugbear exclaimed. "Airbuzz, stop that!"

Airbuzz stumbled back after Rush kicked him off. "I thought he was an Autobot!" Airbuzz yelped. "He was all sneaking around like-"

"You afthole! This bloody hurts!" Rush snarled as he struggled to sit up. "By the Allspark, I am going to tie your wings around your face and jam your rifle right up your-"

"Hey, hey! Easy!" Twofist stopped him. "Rushlight! Where were you?"

"Delta-Three!" Rush snapped. He clapped his other hand over the new hole still smoking in the middle of his chassis. "Where YOU and Turbo were supposed to be!"

"Hey, Buggy here and I had a few shanix to make," Twofist replied with a shrug. "Stop moving, you're leaking coolant everywhere. Where's Turbo?"

"How the frag should I know!" Rush spat. "Processing got grenaded! BigJaw's dead! And so's Carbide! And Artemia! And, and that new guy, and whatsisface from Accounting-"

"They're all dead?" Bugbear seemed staggered.

"I guess so!" Rush panted. "Ow, this hurts... you gotta get me outta here, Fist..."

"No way," Twofist snorted. He picked up Rush's dropped laser pistol and examined it. "Oh good, still charged."

"No way?" Rush shot a glare up at the tall, gangly flier and snarled, "Airbuzz, you fragger, you shot me first! Help me up!"

Airbuzz shrugged. "Okay," he said, shouldering his rifle as he stepped forward.

"Leave him!" Twofist suddenly barked at him. "He's just going to leave a trail of coolant and energon behind, and he'll lead the Bots right to us. Bugbear, Airfarce and I are gonna grab Feldspar's private shuttle out back, and we're blowing this joint. There's not enough room for four people."

"There's totally room for four!" Rush sputtered.

"Well, I've got all this other stuff to bring." Twofist shrugged.

"Fist-" Rush gurgled in fury.

But the long-winded banter had caught up to them quickly. "Hey!" someone shouted from the perpendicular corridor. "Stop right there!"

"Scrap!" Twofist gasped. He turned to dodge back into the adjacent corner, but it was too late for the others.

A spray of laser fire burst into the corridor, coring right through Bugbear's wide chassis and searing sooty holes into Airbuzz's domed chest. Both Decepticons collapsed without even a cry, dropping their weapons as they crumpled with heavy thuds, one, two. Rush, who was already on the ground, simply curled up on his side and covered his head, jaws gritted.

Twofist meanwhile was already running away.

"Hey, there's one more!"

"Let 'em go. Team five will flush him out."

Rush did not uncurl from his fetal position even as footsteps clomped forward.

"Pylon, did you actually yell at them to stop?"

"Well, I mean... it worked, right?"

"You idiot."

The second a hand seized his arm, Rush uncoiled like a rabid cyberweasel. He swung his fist and missed, latched onto his attacker's arm and kicked out at his second assailant, and then was shot again for his trouble. _Pew!_

"Whetstone, you missed one!"

"Not this time."

"Ow, I think he bit me...!"

A third voice suddenly echoed down the corridor.

"Team Two? Is that you?"

With a scrape, Pylon and his partner turned about.

"Oh, it's the turbo-rat," Whetstone sneered.

On the ground and bleeding out, Rush's optics flickered as he tilted his head back in an attempt to see what was going on. "Ughk..." he croaked, coughing up blue coolant.

The first thing Rush saw, albeit fuzzily thanks to his fading vision, was that the hulking grey mech standing over him was wearing a purple Decepticon sigil on his chest. His orange-plated partner likewise bore the same badge on his upper shoulder. Fellow Decepticons...? Rush's fingers twitched, but the rest of his damaged body refused to move in response to his growing outrage.

Meanwhile, the third party member had stopped to joined them.

"Sorry, Rushly," the mech sighed as he stood over Rush. "If I'd gotten here sooner, you wouldn't be in this mess."

It was Turbogear.


	4. Chapter 4: War Buddies

_Another fifty points to anyone who gets the 'Eyebite' reference. ;)_

* * *

**Chapter 4: War Buddies**

"So, why aren't we killing this guy yet," said Whetstone, glancing between the orange-painted Pylon and indigo-plated Turbogear.

"Just a moment. This one did a favour for me, back in the day," Turbogear said calmly, as he stepped in between Whetstone's large grey form and Rush's smaller figure sprawled out on the floor.

"'This one'?" Rush sneered, and then coughed up more energon-mixed coolant. "Give me a break. Why are Decepticons attacking a Decepticon base, Turbo? And why the hell are you in charge?"

"Oh no, I'm the boss of no one," Turbogear puffed, looking smug nonetheless. "I'm just the infiltrator around here. The spy, you might even say. Did you really think those were dirty videos I was trading back and forth all this time? I know what they've been calling me behind my back."

"That was Tarball," Rush grunted. "He's dead, by the way."

"Thank Primus for that." Turbogear waved dismissively. "Please say we got everyone else in there too."

"Even got a few people from Accounting."

"Oh, good times. I hated that blue guy from Eyebite's office."

"Carbide?"

"Yeah, him. What a sack of used oil."

"Hey Turbo," Whetstone coughed, and cleared his vocals. "So, do we waste this guy or not?"

"Yeah!" Pylon chipped in. "Who is he, anyway?"

"This zesty young fellow here," Turbogear laughed, "Is the one who got me out of E-Stalsem."

"E-Stalsem?" Whetstone frowned.

"The trench planet," Pylon supplied helpfully.

"Yes, the very one." Turbogear grinned. "If not for my friend Rushlight here, the war on that planet would still be going. In fact, you might even say he single-handedly ended it."

"This guy?" Whetstone stared dubiously down at Rush, who continued to steadily bleed out with a hand over his chest.

"Isn't that so?" Turbogear knelt down to Rush's level with a smile. "Go on, Rushly. Maybe they'll spare you if you tell a good tale."

"Not likely," Rush rasped, panting. He was in even worse pain than when Airbuzz had shot him in the back. Fortunately Airbuzz's aim had not been very good, but the damage was still significant. The newest hole smoking in his chest plate had also been a poorly-aimed shot, and had only really taken out a servo-cluster next to his torso actuator. It wasn't vital, but it still hurt like a glitch.

"Oh fine, I'll spoil it for you," Turbogear sighed, with a dramatic roll of his optics.

"On E-Stalsem, a proxy planet doomed to destruction thanks to the Cybertronians, the war on the Decepticon side was mostly engineered by a well-seasoned warlord aptly named Warhammer," Turbogear began articulately, as he pushed himself back up to his feet again. "At a critical moment in battle, Warhammer was felled by a rather gruesome weapon devised by the indigenous locals. But as luck would have it, he was rescued by a team of field medics who managed to bear the general's body back behind the front lines. Leading that particular expedition was one of the few surviving medics, Rush-"

"Paramedic," Rush corrected him, from the floor.

"-light," Turbogear continued on smoothly, disregarding the erratum. "Who, despite his inexperience as a surgeon, was the only field medic qualified to operate on the grievously wounded general. To this day I really think Rushlight would have been able to save the general's life, but..."

Turbogear turned around and shrugged, glancing between his two gun-toting cohorts left standing. "I made him a deal he couldn't refuse."

"W...what kind of deal?" Pylon ventured curiously.

"I offered our dear coward here a free trip off E-Stalsem, and a safe, cozy job pushing data instead of spending his days elbow-deep in acid-mud, grease and guts," Turbogear replied, with a grin. "It didn't take much to convince him, really. So Rushlight here single-handedly murdered the general and successfully made it off-planet. The Decepticons retreated, the natives promptly devoured the Autobots alive, and the Decepticon cause is much unburdened by a useless battle on a worthless front. Thanks to me."

"Wow. Backstab much?" Pylon said, turning his gaze down at Rush.

Rush flipped him the bird.

"Do forgive him, he's a Decepticon," Turbogear laughed. "Anyway, I think it'd be nice to spare him. Don't you think, Rushly?"

"Like I have a choice," Rush spat.

"Not really. Take him to the medics, gentlemechs. This one's a docutech from Processing. He's not BigJaw, but he'll do." Turbogear waved at the other two soldiers.

Rush didn't see much point in resisting as Pylon bent down to pick him up by the arm and drag him, unceremoniously, down the corridor after him. The last thing Rush remembered was the fading view of Airbuzz and Bugbear's bodies laying motionless in a growing pool of spilled energon and coolant-laced oil and fluid. Where had Twofist gone...?


	5. Chapter 5: Objection!

**Chapter 5: Objection**

The bright, loud world came screaming back with harsh clarity.

"Oh geez, look at that! Hey, stop the current, I think he's awake now."

"Like the screaming didn't tip you off." Mercifully, the defibrillator was switched off, leaving Rush's stricken body to collapse again.

"Hey buddy, you okay?" a voice said, hovering overhead.

Still twitching spasmodically from residual electrical shock, Rush's optics took a moment to lower the brightness of the gain and adjust focus on the tiled ceiling directly in his line of sight. He recognized some elements of the Targa-7 offices that he worked in, since they all looked the same, but seeing it at his particular angle was rather disorienting, which is to say he was lying flat on his back on an elevated surface, namely a table, or somebody's desk. The air smelt strongly of melted copper and singed metal, used energon and other personal fluids. In the background, he could hear distant murmurings; it was a fairly large office, he supposed.

Then he found himself staring into the face of someone he didn't recognize. It was a nice face, clean and shapely, with a pale pink visor and a nice smile. It was a femme in red white headgear, a colour that he had long since learned to associate with a military medic.

"Nguh," Rush supplied helpfully. A wisp of smoke streamed out of his mouth.

"Phew, that was a close one! You're lucky we were here!" the pretty face went on chirpily. "We were trying to lift you out of stasis lock when your laser core support suddenly crashed! Turns out it was just a power supply issue, so all we had to do was apply a quick booster jump and wham, prime time! How d'ya feel, little guy?"

"W... why did I experience power failure?" Rush said, feeling rather minty and clear-minded despite the slow, sleepy reboot of his senses and servo systems. "I was only shot in the HOLY SCRAP what did you DO to me?"

Rush had raised his head and was staring down the length of his body. Alligator clips were clamped to most of his internals - which were now external, he noted with bemused, terrible calmness- which had been pulled out of his now open torso cavity like so much tangled netting. Various hoses and hydraulic tubing had been cut and tied back together with twist-ties. Some vital-looking parts glistened viscously in the overhead lights. There were colourful little plastic tags and sticky notes taped all over everything, most of them with "?" written on them in red pen.

Were his current online senses not already reeling from the shock, he would have screamed again.

"What is this, amateur hour?" Rush shrieked instead. "What's going on? Who's responsible for this?"

"Hey, hey! Calm down," the femme was saying, holding up her dainty hands. "We performed a routine diagnostic scan on you and found that your micromachine count was unusually high! So Doctor Bonesaw here-"

"That's me," said the second voice from before, off to one side.

"-decided he could fix the problem straight away!"

"Why- where- get this back into me right now!" Rush demanded, as he stabbed a finger at the tangled mass laying across his torso in various stages of repair. "What in the Pit did you two do? It was a simple laserburn trauma with no shrapnel, why the PIT did you open me up for?"

Rush was beginning to feel faint again, but he fought for consciousness this time as his power centres struggled to maintain proper amperage to various parts of his head, laser core, and spark casing. With great effort he turned his flickering gaze off to one side to get a better look at this medic distressingly named Bonesaw.

The mech was certainly a medic, armoured in white and red, though his white was going grey from long-term exposure, and the red was frankly going a bit orange as well. Seated on the remains of an upturned desk, he looked perfectly calm as he scrolled through a semi-transparent datapad screen copy - and Rush choked as he read the title of the manual backwards - of Steel's Anatomy, a medical textbook that Rush had memorized since med school himself. Bonesaw's copy of the manual looked distressingly new.

"You were suffering from mechanical stress in the lower autoric processor," Bonesaw was saying, not in the least distracted from his perusal. "In short, you had multiple mechanical ulcers. I just dove in to patch those up along with the various holes that your friends put into you."

"They're not my friends!" Rush spat, doing his best to move his right arm, with no success. "Who- who the Pit are you? I didn't ask for this!"

"Starrunner, if you could induce stasis lock in our patient here, please," Bonesaw said, and Rush could hear the medical femme tinkering around with something just out of sight. He tried to turn his head to see what Starrunner was up to, but all he could see was a view of her posterior, which wasn't a terrible view after all. Rush then quickly realized that she was unearthing a large vacuum apparatus from a large tool crate, and he resumed panicking again.

"No! Absolutely not!" Rush sputtered as he whipped his head back around to glare at Bonesaw. "Where's Turbogear?"

As if on cue, Turbogear's voice emanated from somewhere stage right.

"Oh, he's up! Good! How's it feel to be on the other end of the scalpel, eh Rushly?" Turbogear chuckled as he swaggered up to the side of Rush's table. Now that he was in the light, Rush could see Turbogear a little better, and was faintly surprised by what he saw. In addition to a new paint job, Turbogear had received some body modifications since they'd last met (roughly 38 megacycles ago), namely a pair of wings that jutted out flat against his back. He'd been painted beige and mud-brown back on E-Stalsem and during his time here as a desk jockey, but was now a polished shade of indigo that shimmered weirdly in the sharp fluorescent lights overhead.

"I am going to kill the hell out of you," Rush told him, unfazed. His right arm was still unresponsive, and right now he just really wanted to hit someone. Preferably Turbogear. "And why do you look like that?"

"Hey, don't knock free medicine! Don't worry, it's all for your own improvement," Turbogear soothed, as he reached over to give Rush's exposed internals a curt little pat. "Call it incentive for the second great deal I'm going to offer you, old chum."

"Screw you," Rush snarled, using his good arm to swat Starrunner away from him. Starrunner gasped and clutched her nefarious device closer to chest.

"This is bullscrap, Turbo," Rush went on. "I didn't agree to anything! Why are you doing this to me?"

"I've asked the good medic Bonesaw here to install a special mod for you!" Turbogear beamed. He picked up a rather pointy-looking tool from a nearby tray and casually examined the business end of it. "Absolutely free of charge! Trust me, you'll like it."

"No!" Rush grated, still trying to push Starrunner aside. "No modifications! Put my guts back in right now, or-"

"Or what?" Turbogear's face was suddenly right in Rush's line of view, and rather too close for comfort. He grinned, green optics gleaming. "You'll kill me too? Like the General?"

Rush fell dead silent. If word somehow got out that Rushlight had played traitor to The Cause, there was going to be an unpleasant and uncertain future for him. The only uncertainty really was whether or not he'd be executed quickly or slowly, and as the Decepticons were not great fans of traitors, the possibility of being terminated slowly and excruciatingly loomed darkly on the horizon. He didn't dare glance over at Bonesaw or even the pink-opticked Starrunner, but he swallowed, nervously.

"I did no such thing," he said slowly and firmly.

"Of course not." Turbogear's grin glinted. He then leaned away, and tapped Rush's bare internals with the pointy end of the surgical tool in his hand. "That's why you're going to gracefully accept this gift, old chum, and then glide on your merry way to wherever I tell you to go."

"Oh great frag," Rush swore, optics widening. "Are you... are you trying to blackmail me?"

"Trying? Son, I already have!" Turbogear laughed, as he spread his arms wide. "I own you now, whether you like it or not. Especially when you don't like it."

Rush was now desperately trying to struggle, but all of his motor functions were still asleep, save for his left arm. Nonetheless, he tried his very best to reach upward for Turbogear's smug face in an attempt to rip it off with his bare fingers. "Is THAT what this raid is for? So you can stuff black market bodyparts in me and tell me what to do? Are you insane?"

"Oh, I'm perfectly sane, but it's you I'm worried about," Turbogear murmured with a rub of his chin and a concerned frown.

"I'm going to _kill_ you!" Rush shrieked, nearly choking with rage.

"Oh, isn't he sparky?" Turbogear turned to Bonesaw with a winning grin. "He was like this back on E-Stalsem, too. Flipped his lid every five minutes, hilarious to watch. Especially when he's got a sharp object in his hands."

All Rush could do was make strangled, angry noises as Turbogear made his way around the table - which was indeed made up of two desks pushed together - towards Bonesaw.

"Doctor," Turbogear went on, as the medic squinted at his anatomy text. "Do understand that you were hired to perform a very specific surgery on my new lackey here... but was it necessary to do it right now? The procedure will take several megacycles to complete, if not the entire day."

"All day? What kind of med school novice do you take me for?" Bonesaw scoffed. "I'll have him done in a couple megacycles."

"But I need him right now," Turbogear pressed insistently.

"What for? You've got plenty of goons running around for you."

"They're not exactly mine, you see," Turbogear explained patiently. "I'm just... borrowing the opportunity, if you get my meaning. I was rather expecting you to take your time with your patient, you know... elsewhere. And not in the middle of a treacherous, violent raid on a friendly outpost."

"Well that ain't my problem now, is it?" Bonesaw switched his manual off, and with a creak he pushed himself up to his feet again. "Don't worry, these goons will take a while to load up on all of this H-energon. Then it'll take twice as long for the boss to finish stepping on Feldspar to get his precious info for whatever it is he's looking for."

"He's not really my boss," Turbogear tried to explain, again, with a faint grimace. "I mean, for now he is, but... Anyway, that's not important. How soon can you finish the job?"

"Like I told you, Mister Turbogear. Two megacycles." Bonesaw held up two fingers. "It'll take him longer to adapt to the changes, and I wouldn't recommend any kind of strenuous movement for him until his immune system settles down. I mean, his body might reject the new parts."

"I'm already objecting!" Rush snarled somewhere in the background.

"He said rejecting!" Turbogear shouted back. "Anyway, all right then. I trust you. You did the same for me, so it should be no problem to fix him up the same way, right?"

"Well, to be fair, your procedure took several days," Bonesaw clarified. "And several short sessions spread out over months. But this time I'm gonna do him all at once. But don't worry. If he's as peppy as you say he is, he'll be too pissed off to worry about anything else."

"Oh good, just what I like to hear," Turbogear replied with a broad grin. "In that case, I'll go see what the captain's up to. I'll be back in a bit."

While Turbogear strode on out of the room, Starrunner waved goodbye to him as the door swished shut behind him. That left Turbogear standing alone in the darkened, red-lit corridor, where he sighed and slumped his shoulders.

"Schedule's a bit tight," he murmured to himself, casting a suspicious glance up and down the darkened hall, "but I think we'll manage, eh?"

And with that he straightened up again and strolled on down the corridor at a casual swagger, whistling to himself.


	6. Chapter 6: Unarmed and Ready

**Chapter 6: Unarmed and Ready**

Twofist had found a hiding place, but it wasn't a very good one.

"Okay," he whispered, optics darting around in the dark. He tried very hard to even breathe too loud. "Everyone you know is dead, all the exits are blocked off, and Feldspar's office is a big vacuum-sucked hole in the ground, which means his private transport also got vaped. This place is overrun with... with other Decepticons who either didn't get the memo that this was a secret 'Con base, or someone's being a Primus-damned traitor and they're raiding the refinery because... because they're _stupid_. So frelling stupid! Are you getting any of this?"

He stared expectantly at his partner in crime, with whom he was sharing desk space. It was Tarball, but he had long since dipped into stasis lock with no chance of reviving on his own without some serious help.

"Right." Twofist stared nervously at Tarball's head, which was a cable or two short of falling right off. "Primus, what did they do to you guys...? Yeesh."

Eventually, Twofist pushed himself back up to his feet and ducked out from under Tarball's desk, and began tip-toeing past the sprawled bodies and dimly-glowing puddles of spilled energon on the floor. The office was a ruin; half-melted holes and laser burns battered the walls and hanging light fixtures, the ceiling lights and tiles were blackened with soot, and most of the electrical equipment, including employees, were sparking and flickering. Twofist had even managed to spot BigJaw's enormous bulk bent over backwards on Rush's desk in the dark, and stared in fascination at the sheer amount of damage that a chair had done to the Staff-Sergeant's face.

"Wow," Twofist remarked, peering closely at the dripping, torn remains of BigJaw's skull, which had long since drained of all fluid and contents. "They weren't kidding when they said you didn't have much going on up there."

Twofist crept past him to get to the other side of Rush's desk. He tried yanking on the top drawer of the desk, but had to push BigJaw's huge, heavy arm out of the way first. It took a few cycles to get it to stay put, since one of BigJaw's arms weighed about as much as Twofist himself.

"I know you keep a piece in here, Rushly," Twofist growled once he got the arm to stop sliding back into place. He then tried to wedge the drawer open. "Don't tell me you took it with you..."

After some rattling the drawer finally crunched open. A few spare memory sticks, a pen and a bottle of capsules rolled forward, bumping meekly up against the sides of the drawer.

"Rushlight, I'm severely disappointed in you," Twofist sighed, as he reached in to pick up the bottle. "I thought you were more paranoid than this. Then again, you're dead, so..."

Twofist eyed the label on the bottle and frowned slightly. "Antidepressants? Why am I not surprised." He pocketed the bottle anyway, and shoved the drawer shut again.

No luck in the second drawer either, though Twofist found a small clip of hard ammunition, which he also pocketed.

The rest of Forms and Processing, which was now a sparking, creeping mess of hole-riddled desks and personnel, leaking lubricant and energon, and broken datapads everywhere, turned out to be just as unhelpful. Twofist continued looting through the remains of the office anyway, searching for spare change and various personal items, but it seemed that no one bothered to hide weapons in the office anymore.

"Oh, frell. This is all your fault, Tarball!" Twofist seethed as he shot a dirty look over in the direction of Tarball's desk. "Why anyone would sell you a gun in this place is beyond me, but thanks to you, everyone's taken that no-firearms rule seriously, and now there's nothing for me to pillage in here."

He shook his fist at the desk, but to no avail; Tarball was beyond responding. However, someone else waved back instead. Twofist nearly bolted in panic when a weak voice emerged from the wreckage.

"Hello?" someone coughed; it was a femme tone. "Please... help..."

Twofist was two steps away from beating a hasty retreat until he realized that the voice creaking out from beneath a charred pile of broken furniture was actually feminine. "Wh... Artemia? Is that you?" he quavered, half-afraid that he was right.

"Get me out of here," the voice coughed again. The mound of ruined furniture shifted slightly, causing bits to fall off. "My arm is pinned and I can't move. Who is that...?"

"It- it's me! Twofist!" Twofist exclaimed. In a hurry he had jogged back over towards the middle row of desks in the office. "I was, uh... I came late to the party. Hold on!"

"Twofist? Scrap it all, is there anybody else instead?" Artemia moaned, voice muffled.

"Sorry sweets, it's me or Tarball over there, and he's kinda dead," Twofist admitted, as he began hauling a burnt chair off the top of the pile.

"Is he? Good Primacon himself! Is everybody dead?"

"Looks like it. Oh, and Pervogear is a damn faction spy. Did you know that?"

"What? Turbo is an Autobot?"

"I think so."

"Get me out of here, Twofist! I'm going to shove my foot so far up his boron compressor, he'll taste the floor!"

As Twofist tossed chairs and tables aside, he discovered that bits of the detritus were starting to come up arms and hands. "Uh... Artemia? There's... um. I think... I've found Carbide."

"I know. He shielded me from the frag grenade before it went off," Artemia sighed, as she began to emerge from beneath the wreckage. "Awfully brave of him, but I guess he had no idea I was better armoured than he was."

"Were you? Er, are you?" Twofist stammered, as he leaned aside to grab a nearby office stool that hadn't been completely shot up. With the legs of the stool he jabbed hesitantly at the remains of Carbide the office secretary. "Primus, he's oozing everywhere. Sorry."

"It's fine. He's been dripping down my shoulder for nearly a megacycle now. Just push him off to the left, and that'll let me get my arm out from under this filing cabinet," Artemia said.

Twofist quickly did as he was told. Spilt energon dribbled grotesquely over his arms as he shoved at Carbide's heavy, inert body in an attempt to tip it off the top the broken desk that lay awkwardly over the Accounting executive. However, the move triggered some kind of Rube Goldberg-esque reaction in the rest of the junk surrounding them. Carbide fell onto a table leg, which tipped a fallen monitor which then spun it around causing a loose cable to tighten around a chair leg that happened to be supporting a landslide of datapads which then slid off in succession, flattening a wastebin that then tipped over and depressed another stray cable that snapped up and struck a delicately-balanced table leg which then tipped the table backwards, causing Carbide's body to suddenly roll back the way it came, and straight into Twofist who had been standing and watching the lightning-fast reaction instead of watching where the dead secretary was falling. Carbide rammed headfirst into Twofist's face with a hard whonk.

"Agh!" Twofist blurted out, flailing in terror as the body slammed into him, causing him to topple over backwards. Carbide then folded up awkwardly as he fell, and the full weight of him collapsed on top of the hapless Twofist underneath.

"Oh Primus, get him off!" Twofist yowled. As he panicked, more of Carbide's mortal fluids sloshed out of Carbide's various laser-induced holes to splash all over him. "He's leaking out all over me! And he smells like too much cologne!"

"Quit your whining!" Artemia snapped as she tugged herself out from beneath the remains of the wreck. "You'll attract every damn Autobot with your bellyaching! And- oh, nuts and bolts."

Twofist was still flailing around helplessly by the time Artemia had freed herself. She was remarkably strong, Twofist noted dimly as she single-handedly grabbed Carbide's shoulder and rolled the heavy mech off of Twofist's chest. It took Twofist another cycle to realize that Artemia was indeed, single-handed; she was missing an arm from the shoulder down.

"Holy hydrocarbons. Doesn't that hurt?" Twofist stared in amazement. Artemia merely bent down, seized him by the arm, and jerked him back up to his feet.

"A bit," Artemia remarked with a scowl, as she turned to glare at the sparking stump of her shoulder. "I'd already worked most of it out from under the filing cabinet until you showed up. I thought you were an Autobot, so I went into silent mode until I realized you were talking to yourself."

There was no reply while Twofist gazed down at himself. "Ugh," he finally said, as he flung drops of energon off his fingertips. "I'm... covered in Carbide."

"You'll get over it." Artemia smiled and patted Twofist on the head, as she easily stood a head above him. "Now let me find a gun or something and then we can get out of here."

That immediately caught Twofist's attention. "You have a weapon?"

Artemia said nothing at first as she navigated past the astonished Twofist and around a few fallen shelves until she arrived at Rush's desk. She then began patting and prodding at BigJaw's still-smoking body until Twofist finally caught up.

"What are you doing?" he asked in bewilderment, watching as Artemia searched BigJaw's body.

"Blowjob here confiscated a few toys from the jockeys here in the office," Artemia explained, as she tugged open one of the fallen Staff-Sergeant's side panels. "I figured he was still carrying them around, because he's a- aha!"

With a heavy click, Artemia withdraw a small by heavy-looking little pistol from one of BigJaw's side compartments. The weapon was somewhat antiqued but well-kept, coated in a matte finish with few adornments. It was so out of date that it wasn't even energy-powered; it had an old-fashioned rotating chamber on it.

"That thing looks as old as my predecessor," Twofist remarked, looking skeptical. "Does that even work anymore?"

"Yep. This horrible little thing belongs to Rush." Artemia spun the revolving chamber with her thumb. "He's a bit of a sadist like me, so he likes using weapons with close-range stopping power. Lasers are ineffective for that, but these mass-driver weapons are perfect against larger opponents like Blowjob here." She tapped the butt of the pistol against BigJaw's flank.

Twofist just stared at Artemia in bewilderment. "What... how do you know all this? I thought you were just a self-centered, egotistical, vapid office bi-"

The revolver snapped shut with a flick, and suddenly it was pointed at Twofist. "Go on, tell me how you really feel," she said snidely.

Twofist's optics centered in on the black-barrelled muzzle hovering at his nose, so he swallowed his next comment. "I meant, uh... I didn't realize you were, y'know... into that kinda stuff."

"I used to be a soldier on Cybertron before I got this cushy job," Artemia sniffed, as she lifted the gun away. "I got rebuilt so many times that I just quit. I couldn't stand it. Targa wasn't really my first choice, but military employment is just easier for me to handle. I never thought the war would ever reach us here, but..."

The femme grimaced as she squinted out across the smoking ruins of the Forms and Processing main office. Somewhere in the background, a light fixture dropped out of the ceiling and clattered to the floor in a fizzing, sparking mess.

"This is just Cybertron all over again," Artemia sighed.

Against his better judgment, Twofist leaned aside to fish around in one of his pocket compartments until he produced the small ammo clip that he had pilfered from Rush's desk. "Uh. Here," he offered.

Artemia snapped out of her reverie when she realized Twofist was holding something out to her. "Oh! That's useful," she suddenly beamed. With another flick, the revolving chamber in her gun popped out again. "Load that up for me, will you, dear? I'd do it myself, but I'm sort of at a disadvantage here."

"You look like you could use a hand." Twofist extracted the curiously thick-bodied bullets from the clip to slot them into the empty chamber holes.

"Oh, we're starting up with the armless puns now, are we?" Artemia warned him with a glare.

"I'm the one with the ammunition you need," Twofist pointed out loftily, as he waved the last bullet in her face.

"You couldn't fire a gun to save your life," Artemia sneered.

"Okay, point. This is obviously out of my league." Twofist shrugged, and slotted in the last bullet for her. "I just... had no idea you used to be... a soldier?"

"Decepticon scout," Artemia clarified, as she tipped the pistol back to snap the chamber into place again. "Had shoulder-mounted missile launchers, flight mode and everything." She smiled, distantly.

Twofist's imagination could barely keep up. Accounting executive Artemia, with her trim waistline and polished headgear and with _glitter_ painted over her optics, with... large missile launchers fastened to her shoulders and wings. Wow. "We should probably go," he muttered.

"Sarge. I was a Sergeant," Artemia told him casually. "Follow my lead, and maybe you won't become cannon fodder."

There wasn't much else Twofist could really do or say except to obey. And for some reason, he was really okay with that.


	7. Chapter 7: Refurbed Intel Equipment

**Chapter 7: Refurbed Intelligence Equipment**

Leftenant-Colonel Feldspar, long-time war veteran and current commander of the secret Targa-7 Decepticon military base, was currently being tortured for information. Or at least, his captors were attempting to do so.

"Well, I just don't know," Feldspar admitted with a shrug. His arms were bound together behind his back by old-fashioned clamps, and his feet were bound to the splayed feet of a rolling office chair. "The DX edition of the Torturetron 550 was inexpensive for a reason..."

Scunge, one of the henchmen in charge of the torture session, was still fiddling around with a handful of coloured cables attached to a small, innocuous black box with several switches and coloured lights on it. The sleek-looking box notably had the word TORTURETRON 550 labelled on its side in flashy Cybertronian letters.

"What? Whaddya say that for?" Scunge asked, frowning over at the large Colonel.

"Well, it's just that... oh, nevermind," Feldspar sighed dramatically. He pretended to look more interested in the condition of his tank tread-shoulders. He had taken a few hits prior to being captured, but he had taken out a few of them, too.

"Boss, I think he's trying to wiggle out of it," Scunge muttered.

He shot a look up at the tall Decepticon standing aside with his arms crossed. This particular individual was painted a slight off-white and purple, with black and blue armour detail. At his back, his jutting wings were blue-striped and enormous. The Decepticon sigil was worn with obvious pride in the middle of his chest.

"Oh, is he...?" the big mech grunted.

A distant explosion gently rocked the floor, and the panels underfoot shuddered. The men, affectionately called the Goons, were likely still running around pillaging the station. The white-and-purple mech stepped over Scunge's attempts to fix the Torturetron, towards where Colonel Feldspar was being held.

"He'd better get to talking now before this thing gets fixed," the large mech went on. He eyeballed the unusually calm Lt-Colonel with a suspicious squint, and casually just strolled around him. "Not that we're known for mercy, but as they say, traitors are the worst kind of scum."

Feldspar just stared up at him, carefully. "I didn't realize hypocrisy was one of your lesser-known skills, Octane."

"Hypowhat?" Octane snorted at him. "Whatever you've heard, it's all lies." He grinned sideways at the Lt-Colonel.

Feldspar merely kept his glaring gaze on him. "You're a bleeding snitch and a coward," he went on critically, breaking off his gaze as Octane strolled along behind him now. "How did you manage to organize all of... this?"

For emphasis, Feldspar cast his gaze all around. In the spare office, most of the other furniture had been pushed to the walls, leaving only the data terminals bolted to the floor. In the cleared-off space near the back of the room, Feldspar's chair had been set up strategically in the centre of a handy spotlight. There were no other people in the room besides the present three.

"What, you don't think I'm able to orchestrate large-scale fuel raids by myself?" Octane scoffed, with a hand placed dramatically over his chest plate.

"I'm surprised you're able to use large-scale words," Feldspar replied dryly.

"Like 'orchestrate?'" Scunge supplied helpfully.

Octane aimed a sharp, nasty kick at the back of his henchman, who yelped and winced, rubbing his backside.

"It takes a lot of work to do what I do," Octane sniffed haughtily, as he resumed his strolling. "I don't reveal my hand until the last nano-klik."

"Waaait a cycle..." Feldspar narrowed his optics at the tall, imposing Decepticon. Then his optics went wide. "I don't believe it. Primus...!" he suddenly blurted out with a laugh. "I can't believe you had the lugnuts to trust that little-"

"You'd better believe it!" Octane huffed indignantly. "I will always be one step ahead of you-"

"No, I mean you managed to buy off my own spy," Feldspar sneered. "What, did you offer him my portion of the skim in exchange for throwing me over? Is that it?"

"Are you kidding?" Octane looked outraged. "Me, rely on the services of your own-"

"Boss, it's working!" Scunge suddenly piped up.

Octane turned and glanced down at the Torturetron, which now hummed to life. The lights on its surface glittered with silent malice.

"Good. Prep him, now," Octane ordered, irritably.

"Now wait just a klik," Feldspar snarled, leaning forward in his bonds, which were tight enough to restrict him from achieving even that. "As I was saying, that's the DX model. You realize that thing is just as likely to kill me as actually torture me." He lofted a brow ridge.

Octane swung his gaze over towards Scunge, who had now stood back up with an electrical power drill in one hand. "The DX models were always a bit ticky," he admitted with a shrug.

"Now how are you supposed to torture me if I die in five cycles hooked up to that thing? How is that going to look in your report, you cheap, lying bastard?" Feldspar when on, with a sarcastic scowl.

"Megatron won't care about minor details," Octane said with a dismissive gesture, just as the door at the back of the room swished open. He ignored it. "Scunge, hurry it up-"

"You!" Feldspar suddenly snarled, casting his gaze towards the opening door. "YOU were supposed to-"

"Surprise!" Turbogear announced with a huge grin on his face. He held his hands up in the air in a gesture of mock-surrender. "Yes, it was me all along, sorry, old chap! I do apologize for the delay."

Octane just smiled at the sight of his conspirator. "Good timing. I was just about to begin the interrogation of your former employer."

"Oh, now how could I miss that?" Turbogear jogged the rest of the way until he could stand in the same pool of light that shone down over Octane and his henchman, Scunge. "Colonel, you're looking well," he added, with a nod.

"And you're looking for a royal aft-kicking when I get out of here," Feldspar warned him in a low tone. "Turbo! Where the Pit have you been? And why do you look like that? How could you side with this stupid sack of bolts? Whatever he's offering you is pure slag-"

"What are you talking about, old bean? This is Octane here!" Turbogear laughed, and he leaned over to give the big Decepticon a chummy punch in the shoulder. "A capital fellow!"

Feldspar just stared at him in disbelief. "You've gone spare," he mumbled darkly.

"Don't listen to him," Turbogear sniffed, as he patted Octane on the arm. "The Leftenant-Colonel is a former POW, sir. There's little that terrifies him into admission that he has not already experienced once before. He'll know true suffering once we're through with him. Oh, what's this..."

Turbogear leaned aside and peered over at Scunge, who was still sorting out the various cables and attachments on the sleek black box on the floor.

"Oh, it's a Torturetron!" Turbogear beamed. "I haven't seen one of these in ages! Oh my, it's a DX." Immediately he frowned and rubbed his chin thoughfully.

"What? What's wrong with the 550 DX?" Scunge asked, looking as puzzled as he did before.

"Well, I'm highly dubious of your decision to use the DX model," Turbogear said, still gazing down critically at the box. "Not only is the device known for being manufactured with defects, but they are potentially fatal ones, too. I must insist on some higher grade of torture if you're to submit any kind of report to Megatron about this afterwards."

"You see? Even he knows about the DX," Feldspar growled somewhere in the background.

The look on Octane's face was becoming more and more bemused the longer Turbogear spoke, until he finally let out a bark of laughter. "You Targan Decepticons amaze me," he chortled. He then sighed and waved a hand. "Scunge, drill him."

A moment later, the thin, painful screech of drilled metal overshadowed by Feldspar's screams of agony could be heard echoing down every single corridor in the north wing.

Turbogear uncovered his audios as soon as Feldspar's expression went lax. By then, Scunge had hooked up the various adapters and electrodes to the Lt-Colonel's electronic brain, and was now fiddling with various settings on the Torturetron 550.

"Well, that was fun," Turbogear winced. "Guess I'd better get going now, aha..."

But before he could turn around, Octane's hand fell heavily upon his shoulder. "Leaving so soon?" the large mech rumbled. "We've barely begun."

"Well, I don't want to miss out on the looting," Turbogear replied casually, with a somewhat misgiving look.

"There will be plenty for you once we harvest everything here at the plant," Octane assured him with a heavy pat. "Once I tell Megatron about how Feldspar was skimming off profits and making side deals with Autobot suppliers, I'll make sure there's a place for you by Megatron's side."

"Because you have clout with him, I know, you've told me," Turbogear murmured, trying his best not to sound as weak-kneed as he felt. "No, really, I've got... stuff do to."

"You'll miss the interrogation!" Octane protested.

Stalling for time, Turbogear weighed his hands up and down for a moment. "What... exactly are you interrogating him for, anyway? I mean... yes, the only thing I wasn't able to get from him were the encryption codes he'd been using to communicate with the Autobots, but... who cares? We blow up the joint, load up the goods and all's well and done, am I right?"

"See, now this is why I'm the brains of this operation," Octane sighed, as he gave Turbogear's shoulder another heavy pat. "You have no idea just how important the data you've supplied me with really is."

"I... don't?" Turbogear masked his hesitation with a wooden expression.

"Of course not. See," Octane began, as he swept a hand out towards Feldspar's motionless form slouched in his chair, "The Leftenant-Colonel here not only was a treacherous doublecrosser-"

"Aren't we all?" Turbogear seemed confused, as he pointed back and forth between himself and Octane.

Octane ignored that as he continued. "-but he was also an Autobot sympathizer. Don't you see? Once I get a confession from him, Megatron won't be as pissed to find out that we've blown up one of his secret energon refineries! It will all be Feldspar's fault!"

It was now Turbogear's turn to stare dully at him. "What," he said flatly.

"It's genius, I know. You wouldn't understand," Octane sighed.

Turbogear turned and swept Octane's hand off his shoulder. "Now wait just a cycle," he growled, resisting the urge to thrust a stern finger up between them. "Who said anything about blowing anything up? I thought we were just going to grab the codes and sack the place! Not... erase it!"

"What do you think all the shooting was for," Octane said blandly.

"You said your men wanted to blow off some steam!"

"So?"

"I said you could off some of the personnel! Not destroy the refinery!" Turbogear stabbed a finger off towards the doorway, which also happened to be facing the direction of the H-energon processing facility outside of the administration domes.

Octane made an all-suffering sigh and rolled his optics. "They'll just build a new one. And then we'll sack that one later, too."

"That's - no! That wasn't the deal!" Turbogear's wings began quivering now.

Octane had had enough. Suddenly his hand snapped out and grabbed Turbogear by the shoulder-wing, and he jerked him forward.

"Actually, the deal was to have my medic reformat you into a triplechanger like me," he growled into Turbogear's astonished face. "No percentages, no nothing. You've got what you came for. Now you can do as I say, or you can leave before I send Pylon and Whetstone after you."

Turbogear didn't dare blink. "Hokay then," he said brightly, with a grin. "Anything you say, boss."

With a smirk, Octane shoved him away. "Now help me figure out what these codes are," he rumbled warningly.

Turbogear stumbled back a few steps and caught himself. His new wings had hitched up in anger and alarm, but he otherwise did not bother to express his displeasure any further. His schedule had gone from tight to pear-shaped.

"Right," he said stiffly. "On with the show, then...!"


	8. Chapter 8: No Sound In Space

**Chapter 8: No Sound In Space**

The corridors branched between separate facility domes were not necessarily long, just cramped and numerous. They were airtight by necessity and adjusted for artificial gravity, but unfortunately not well-armoured. This was due to budget cuts, of course. Security and safety had been ejected hand in hand.

Currently, the corridor lights had been cut, but the emergency lighting was doing its best in the form of auxiliary infrared gas bulbs lining the floors. The result was that of a hellish, underlit world, subterranean in its darkness and endless in its repetition. Down one of these dark, red-lit corridors, Twofist was trying his best to keep up.

"Artemia!" he panted. "W-wait up! Why are you going so fast!"

"Keep up, shorty!" Artemia growled. She was moving at a good clip down the hallway with little in the way of stealth, clutching Rush's mean little pistol in her remaining hand. Her other shoulder was still short an arm, but apparently she wasn't letting it slow her down.

"No, seriously! I thought you were a scout! Y'know, sneaky!" Twofist hollered. "This isn't sneaking!"

"Keep yelling like that and every Autobot in this slagging facility will hear you!" Artemia snarled over her shoulder.

"Like that one?" Twofist choked. He jabbed a finger at the dark shape approaching them at similar speeds.

"Hey, you!" a gruff voice shouted out. "Stop!"

Artemia's glitter-dusted optics glinted. "Nope!"

With a snap her arm up came up as she skidded to a screeching halt. Her slender torso turned, her weapon angled forward, and without blinking she squeezed off a shot. _BKAM_! Artemia twisted with the recoil to prevent the kick from smashing her grip back into her own face. In the narrow corridor, the gunshot sounded like a punch to the head.

The lone figure at the far end of the hall suddenly pitched backwards right off his feet in a spray of fuel. It hit the floor a meter away with a splat and a heavy crunch, limbs flapping loosely like an unstrung puppet.

Artemia blow the smoke drifting up out of the muzzle of her gun, and then tossed it over her shoulder. "Fist, catch," he said casually, as she began walking over towards the body.

Twofist hastily stumbled forward a step to catch the falling weapon. "Ooh, ow! It's hot!" he hissed, suddenly tossing the steaming weapon back and forth between his hands. "Primus!"

Upon approaching the fallen figure, Artemia knelt down and began one-armedly patting down the body. The dead mech appeared to be a run-of-the-mill flier, broad-winged and scuffed from ages of wear and tear and no maintenance. It wasn't anyone she recognized; no one from this facility had a proper flight mode except for Feldspar and one other.

And then she spotted the Decepticon sigil.

"What in the Pit..." she whispered, staring incredulously at the scratched purple badge. "Oh spark of a glitch..."

Twofist had finally managed to get a hold of the smoking weapon between thumb and forefinger before he stood back up again. "Yikes! Hey Artemia, what're you doing over there?"

"Fisty, we've got trouble," Artemia growled. "They're us."

"Huh?" Twofist was flapping his hand at the gun in a vain attempt to cool it down.

"They're us. They're us! These Primus-slagged Matrix-fraggers are Decepticons!" Artemia hissed as she snatched a knife off the hip of the body she had been searching. "They're raiding their own guys! They just killed our own guys!"

"Why am I not surprised," Twofist sighed, as he finally managed to grip the little gun without burning himself.

"Those- backstabbing...!" Artemia seethed. "What's WRONG with these people?"

Twofist shrugged. "See, that was my dilemma," he began, spreading his hands in supplication. "Either these guys got the wrong info, or they're just a bunchaohPrimus-"

Twofist was staring distinctly over Artemia's shoulder. She whirled around to see a second mech - also a flier, burly and towering - looming over her.

"MATRIX-FRAGGERRRR!" Twofist howled. He slapped Rush's little pistol into both hands, gripping it like death, and pulled the trigger.

The small corridor rocked with thunder as his first shot slammed into the enemy mech. The softhead shell smashed itself into the mech's chestplate, leaving the pointed head of the piercing bullet inside to slice into the heavy armour plating and tumble itself in through the mech's body. The sheer ballistic force sent the bullet exploding out the mech's back in a blast of fuel and shrapnel.

"Stop, stop!" Artemia shrieked. "Twofist you idiot, STOP SHOOTING-"

The other two shots that followed however missed their mark completely, burying themselves deep into the walls, _BKAM, BKOW_! But the noise didn't stop there. With an audial-popping, floor-jarring SLAM the entire wall ruptured into a flashing metal blossom, and the blackness of space screamed inward. The entire section of corridor leapt and shuddered as explosive decompression suddenly ripped the atmosphere right out into the broad vacuum of the moon's barren, frozen surface, streaming thin trails of vapour as it escaped out into the eternal night. The red lights began to flicker, and a warning klaxon began blaring.

The fuel-splattered bodies of the two shot Decepticons slid along the floor, tripped over the edge of the tearing hole and disappeared out of the ever-widening gap in an instant. Twofist had the foresight to grab onto some loose piping, but Artemia was a hand short.

Twofist's shout was lost in the scream of escaping air, but he thrust a hand out to Artemia just as she scraped on past-

His palm was met by a hard slap and a tight grasp of fingers. Too tight perhaps, but Twofist wasn't complaining.

Artemia could barely hear him over the roar. "-flow- sonic-ity!" he was saying, throwing his voice into the face of the shearing wind. "Gas constant- essure- drop- fift- cycles!"

"What?" Artemia hollered into the wind, but Twofist could not hear her either.

"The gas content!" he tried again, "-of this corridor- is pressurized- 300K...! Takes- fifteen cycles- to empty-!"

Artemia could not fathom what Twofist was yelling about, but roughly twenty fuelpump-stopping minutes later, the air within the corridors had effectively drained out of the structure, and all semblance of atmospheric pressure had gone with it. Once the wind stopped trying to suck them out into the terrible vastness of space did Twofist tentatively let go of his pipeline and pull Artemia back into the shadow of the corridor after him.

Without a medium in which to speak in, Twofist switched to internal radio.

"Hey-are you getting this?" he said tentatively, tapping the side of his head with one finger.

Artemia stared at him quizzically for a moment, and it took her a moment to acknowledge. "Yes I can hear you," she replied irritably. "You can let go of me now."

Once they were safely within the corridor, and not within view of the moon's regolith plain, Twofist released Artemia's hand. The klaxon was no longer audible, but the flashing lights were still blinking.

"Sorry," Twofist muttered. "Got a bit, y'know, carried away."

"Stupid!" Artemia slapped him upside the head. "You used up all the ammo, that clip only had four bullets in it! And why the Pit were you discharging a projectile weapon _inside a space station_?

"I was only doing what you were doing!" Twofist protested as he roughly bounced off the opposing wall. "Gah, this creeps me out, I hate space! Let's get outta here!"

With a few strategic launches off surrounding surfaces, the two jockeys slid forward through the remainder of the connecting corridor without further resistance.


	9. Chapter 9: The TORTURETRON 550 DX

**Chapter 9: The TORTURETRON 550 DX**

"It's not working," Scunge said with a troubled frown. Or at least, his brows were creased, since the lower half of his face was partially concealed by a faceplate.

Scunge was still crouched on the floor, trying to tinker with the sleek black box. The flashy TORTURETRON 550 DX sticker was still emblazoned on one side, but the other side - the bit with all the out-dated switches and bulb lights - was being less flashy. A series of cables, all bundled together with twist-ties and plastic rings, snaked across the dusty floor towards the wheeling desk chair where Feldspar sat, arms still clamped behind his back. The thick bundle of cables ended at the back of his head, where the mech's headcasing had been neatly drilled and sawn open to plug the cables directly into his exposed CPU. Feldspar's head was bent forward, jaw hanging loose, optics dull and unlit.

"What do you mean it's not working," Octane muttered, his gaze narrowing as he glared over at his technician. His overlong wings folded back in annoyance.

"I dunno. I mean, he's logged in and everything, but none of the regular interface syntax is responding," Scunge tried to explain. He stared helplessly at the narrow slip of screen on the Torturetron 550 DX. The display was so old that it the liquid crystal beneath the scratched plastic screen had dried up a bit on one half. "It's hanging on some kind of startup process running in the background or... or something."

Octane whipped around to glare at Turbogear. "What is he talking about?" The white-and-purple tankerbot demanded.

Turbogear wordlessly shrugged, looking just as puzzled.

Octane whipped back around to face Scunge. "Well, reboot it or something!" He ordered.

"I already tried that!" Scunge protested. "It just really wants to run this other process first. Look, I'll try to force quit whatever this subroutine is, but mind you this box was programmed a bajillion light-years ago and my handle on basic Lunix is kinda rusty. This thing is older than I am, so its bound to run kinda clunky..."

"Fine, whatever," Octane sighed with an exasperated flap of his arms. "Just how long is this going to take?"

"I dunno. A megacycle?" Scunge shrugged. "It's still configured for the last poor bastard who was plugged into it too, so changing the settings will take another half-mega too."

Turbogear meanwhile heaved a weary sigh in an effort to disguise his relief at the delay. "I wonder what old Feldy here is dreaming about in the meantime...?" he murmured, casting a glance over at the Lt-Colonel's inert face.

* * *

_What...? What's going on here? Hello?_

Feldspar was staring up in a painfully bright light that was being shone directly into his optics. Beyond the edges of the fluorescent white glow was nothing but darkness and sinister shadows. Fuzzy lines of distortion interrupted his vision. Had his optics been damaged?

_I can't move. Where am I?_

In his field of view, a vague silhouette leaned in to stare at him. From the center of a wide, hexagonal head, a single yellow optic shone at him.

"Good. He is conscious," the figure said, his single light blinking slightly. "Have you begun the recording process?"

"Yes, my lord," a second voice said, emanating from off to one side where Feldspar could not see.

Feldspar fixated on the single yellow light rather than stare into the bright lamp. He could not speak either, and for some reason his vision kept jumping and flickering.

"Doctor Ultra Acinus," the first voice said, addressing Feldspar directly, "We have met before. You do remember our last conversation?"

The voice was very calm and cool, with a tone usually reserved for high-falutin college professors, Feldspar noted. To his surprise, he found himself nodding.

"Good," the one-opticked figure replied. "As I do recall, I suggested to you in no uncertain terms that you were to relinquish your thesis data to me. It seems that you were more prepared to face the consequences of defying that order."

Feldspar was even more astonished to discover that he was replying - but in another mech's voice.

"I know what you are," the voice said raspily. To Feldspar, it sounded like it was wheezing from inside his own head. "And I will provide you with nothing, Shockwave."

The yellow light stared at him for about half a second too long to be a casual glance. The light then bobbed aside, nodding to the unseen assistant across from him. Then suddenly Feldspar's vision went crazy, blurring and distorting wildly as a hideously painful shock slammed into his head from behind. His senses reeled, but for some reason the rest of his body did not respond to the pain; rather, he lay completely slack, as though his mind were separate from the rest of his nervous system.

The electrical shock lasted for a few seconds before abruptly cutting off. The yellow optic focused on him again.

"As you have just now experienced, your own empathy device is performing as speculated," the cool voice went on.

"My invention isn't supposed to be used this way!" Feldspar snarled, though not in his own voice. "It's supposed to be a shared simulation empathy enhancer! What- what have you done with it? Did you just turn it into a torture device?"

"Precisely," said the flickering yellow optic.

At this moment, Feldspar realized what was going on. For some reason he was experiencing the last moments of this Ultra Acinus, but... how? Dimly, recalled Scunge, and his own complaint about the... oh, dear Primus. He was logged into it, and being forced to relive another victim's pain.

"However, your presence here today is not specifically to test your device," the singular optic went on. "It is your thesis work on the dual-altmode transforming cog that interests me. If you will not reveal the location of your notes, Doctor Acinus, then I must have you reveal them to me in person, however long it takes."

"And if I resist, you'll just continue to torture me with your twisted version of the Empathy Box," the doctor sneered.

"Correct," the optic replied. "As you can see, the device causes the mind to experience pain directly without actual physical harm. Your body will never tire, break, or shut down. You will be able to feel pain as a sensation for an infinite length of time. You will never fall into stasis lock. And there is no one who knows you're here."

"That is true," Acinus muttered. "But sooner or later, the pain will break me. And when that happens, I assure you that all you will get out of me is pure gibberish. Going insane will facilitate that nicely."

"You will work that hard to protect your research?" the lone optic asked curiously. "Very well, then. Assistant, raise the threshold on the empathy box, and set stimulation to fifty percent."

"Yes, my lord," the assistant replied, out of sight. "Er. Just a moment. It's telling me that my syntax is incorrect, but I'm copying it straight from the manual here..."

The yellow optic paused, and waited.

"...yeah, it's... huh. Slaggit, it just crashed," the assistant went on. "Hold on, it's rebooting now."

The yellow optic continued to wait. It folded its arms and leaned back slightly, as if staving off impatience.

"Aaand... great, now it's taking forever to load," the assistant sighed. "Did this guy program this? This is the worst code I've ever seen. It's more than fitting that he should be tortured by his own work, seriously. Talk about bad karma, eh Doc?"

"Please proceed with the reconfiguration," the yellow optic sighed. "_Now._"

"Okay, okay. I mean, yes my lord. Two astro-seconds. Okay, it saved the settings from last time. Threshold up three bars, and stim set to fifty..."

* * *

No sooner did Turbogear glance over at Feldspar when the Lt-Colonel suddenly burst out with a strangled scream.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Turbogear did a doubletake and staggered away. "I didn't do anything!"

Feldspar continued to ululate a fuel-curdling scream in the meantime, his voice pitched high in agony. As he was a large mech, his voice was large as well, and it filled the derelict office with terrible echoes.

"What- Scunge, what did you do?" Octane shouted over the screeching.

"I-I dunno!" Scunge stammered as he snatched his hands away from the Torturetron. "The box didn't do anything! It's still loading some kind of other software, I- I don't know what it's doing!"

"Shut it up or I'll shut it up for you," Octane snarled, with his hands cover his audials. "Now!"

Scunge did his best to run a flurry of simple commands through the prompt, but none of his syntax proved to be useful. All the while, Feldspar just screamed and screamed, never pausing for breath, never stopping. It was nerve-wracking.

Both Octane and Turbogear watched the screaming mech in mixed horror and fascination. Feldspar's body did not move, but his mouth was open, and horrible noises were coming out of it. Turbogear winced and eventually looked away, but Octane was losing his patience. The sound of the mech in some kind of unreactive pain was off-putting, and to Octane it felt as though the screeching voice was trying to slice into his head, like a sinister shard of glass worming its way into his spark. To put it bluntly, it was maddening.

Octane drew his laser rifle from his back and let the muzzle drop into his open hand. Before Turbogear could stop him, he opened fire on the captive mech.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UPPP!" Octane howled as the semi-automatic laser rifle discharged a flood of hot-pink plasma into Feldspar's body. By the time Turbogear managed to wrest the weapon away from him, it was too late; Feldspar's head and chest plate had been blasted into smoking, melted slag.

"Oh for Prime's sake!" Turbogear shouted as he jerked the rifle away from Octane's twitching hands, "Look what you've done!"

Octane responded with a swift jab of his fist that cuffed Turbogear upside the head. "I had to do something!" he snapped back.

"Stop yelling!" Scunge hollered, his hands still pressed against the sides of his head.

Turbogear staggered aside from the blow, but he kept his grip on the weapon. "Ow! You just- why didn't you just unplug the fragging thing?" he yowled, stabbing a finger over at the pile of cables on Scunge's side of the chair.

In a single stride, Octane had reached Turbogear and was now looming over him. "Give me back my weapon," he growled, looking positively belligerent.

"Are you crazy?" Turbogear began, when suddenly the floor lurched.

Everything in the room bounced an inch up into the air before slamming back down in a series of jarring thuds, including the Decepticons in the room. Scunge had fallen over backward, Octane flailed his arms and managed to stay up right, and Turbogear fell to his knees. Meanwhile, all the desks, filing cabinets, shelving and bookcases began falling onto each other in a domino effect, landing on chairs and tables, wobbling back and forth, and smashing their contents all over the floor.

"What's going on?" Scunge yelped.


	10. Chapter 10: Out Of His Head

**Chapter 10: Out Of My Head**

Elsewhere in the station, Doctor Bonesaw and his lovely assistant Starrunner were at work on their latest experiment; that is, their hapless patient.

Rush's headcase had been opened up. Off to one side on a trolley was a small saw for armour incisions, a drill with several bits and augers laid out on a tray, and various other instruments of unspeakable function. On the other side on another trolley were bits and pieces of Rush's brain casing and assorted contents, all neatly labelled with coloured tape and markered tags, and all still connected to Rush's neural net by their respective wires, filament cables, fibre optics, and assorted physical contact surfaces.

"...didn't understand what all the fuss was about," Starrunner was saying from behind a broad welding mask, her voice muffled. "So I told him, look, if you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out..."

"I think I know how this story ends," Bonesaw muttered. "And don't wave your welding torch around like that, it's unprofessional."

Starrunner lowered her welding torch only after nearly setting a nearby lamp on fire. "Oh! Good idea. Anyway, the mod did not stick at all, but thankfully one of the officers nearby caught the rest of his head in a bowl, or else the entire ceremony would have been ruined!"

"Imagine that," Bonesaw mumbled. He then frowned, and held his hands and soldering iron away from his work for a moment.

"Doctor, what's the matter?" Starrunner asked, glancing up when the doctor paused.

Bonesaw hovered over the inert patient's open headcase for a moment, squinting critically at something. "Hmm... there's... something in here," he muttered. "Tweezers."

Obediently, the nurse placed the delicate metal tweezers into the doctor's open palm. "Debris, you think?" she asked, doing her best not to block the light.

"Probably some stray buckshot, or a bullet," the doctor murmured as he reached in between bare wires and exposed circuitry inside Rush's head with the thin metal tweezers. "Of course, it could just be dust or HOLY Primus...!"

"I don't think you'd find that in there," Starrunner posed thoughtfully for a moment, before the rest of her attention span caught up. "Oh! What is it? The suspense is killing me!" she protested.

Bonesaw set his expression and carefully lifted the foreign debris through the maze in Rush's head, taking care not to touch any adjacent structures. As a rule, medics and surgeons had very steady hands, but Bonesaw was something of an admitted high grade-o-holic, but he never let that get in the way of a good day's work.

"Hmm... I'll have to... pull it out. Nurse, light," Bonesaw grunted, looking faintly alarmed.

There was a creak, and suddenly bright light flooded the operations stage.

Starrunner peered in over Bonesaw's shoulder. "Ooh, I think I can see it!" she exclaimed, as Bonesaw carefully inserted the pointy end of a pair of tweezers in between a sensitive synaptic dendrite chipset and a small portion of basal mechaganglia.

"Don't... disturb me," Bonesaw growled. "One stray twitch could permanently damage his brain. Especially this part. What is it again?"

"Motorbellum inferior," Starrunner replied. "Well, I don't think you could do worse damage than that thing in there."

Both Starrunner and Bonesaw stared raptly as the doctor gingerly pressed both ends of his tweezers around the foreign object.

The little blob squirmed in protest.

* * *

Somewhere at the bottom of a deep, dark, static sea, Rushlight the Decepticon was watching a procession of figures moving along far off in the distance.

How odd, Rush thought. I'm in autistic mode, and yet there's something else besides me in here. Is that some kind of background subroutine that I'd never noticed before?

Hello? he called out. Or rather, he thought about calling out. He didn't even really have a form, either. In autistic mode, there wasn't supposed to be a sense of the Other, and yet here he was, expressing dualistic thought patterns on a subconscious level that was otherwise abnormal. Not that Rush noticed any of it; he was merely experiencing it.

The figures appeared as dim shapes, blurring and flickering on the horizon. Rush tried to get a better look at them, but it was the same at any distance.

There are ghosts in my brain, thought Rush. Holy scrap. But maybe they were just a minor psychic disturbance, and would go away soon. He hoped.

Then the procession suddenly began coming apart, drifting away into the infinite darkness in solid clumps. At such an elementary level of conscious cognition, Rush could not comprehend what was he seeing, or thinking, rather. What was happening? Was something happening now?

And without warning, the ghosts pixellated and redefined into clarity, and then began converging on him.

When Rush saw the faces superimposed on them, he opened his mouth to scream, and instantly drowned.

* * *

The world lurched. Light and shadow reeled in his vision, and without delay, the noisy _spang_ of metallic instruments hitting the floor reached his audials. His arm, now functional again, flailed up and then slammed back down onto the table, along with the rest of his body.

Without waiting for the rest of the universe to finish coalescing into something that made more sense, Rush sat bolt upright and screamed.

Another voice screamed back at him. Oh Primus above, thought Rush, the ghosts have gotten out and they're coming to get me...!

His arm was already reaching out to grab the first thing within reach. In a wide-opticked panic, his fingers closed over a small laser scalpel, and without even a second thought he thrust it forward and stabbed his enemy in the chest. The ghost stared back at him in astonishment, and staggered away.

There was no time to lose. Rush scrambled off the table, and the world tilted again. He snatched up something that looked vaguely like a handle of some sort, and before the ghosts could catch up with him, he stumbled his way out of the room and out into the darkened corridor beyond.

A moment later, Bonesaw stepped out of the back room to see that his equipment had been jolted to the floor by the sudden earthquake, and that his patient was missing.

"Huh. Where'd he go?" he said to no one in particular. That was when he noticed that his assistant was standing stock-still with a surprised look on her face, with a small laser scalpel sticking out of her chest.

"Good Primus!" Bonesaw exclaimed. He jogged up to where the nurse was staring in amazement at the doorway. "Starrunner, are you all right?"

Starrunner glanced down at the scalpel protruding from her chest. "Oh!" she said, apparently having noticed it for the first time as well. "I'm fine! But my feelings are hurt," she protested. "That was so unneccessary!"

Bonesaw reached over and neatly tugged the scalpel out of her chestplate. Apparently nothing major had been punctured, and all that remained of the wound was a small slit in her thinner armour.

"What happened?" Bonesaw asked, scalpel still in hand. "Something caused a minor earthquake that knocked down one of the shelves back there, and then all I heard was a fuel-curdling scream. Was that you?"

"Goodness, no!" Starrunner exclaimed, looking back at him. "I was finishing the suture weld to close up his headcase like you'd asked, when suddenly he woke up and stabbed me!"

"Huh. Well that's no good," Bonesaw mumbled, frowning over at the open doorway. "I wasn't finished with him yet."

"Should I go after him, sir?" Starrunner asked.

"Uh. Probably," Bonesaw mumbled, with a shrug. "I doubt he'll get too far without this."

He held up in his hand an innocent-looking servo-motor with a freshly-welded patch on its side.

Starrunner stared down at it for a moment. "What is that?"

"It's his new fuel regulator, for the second stage T-cog," Bonesaw explained. "Without it, he'll run through his remaining fuel supply in, oh, ten, twenty cycles or so. He'll be running at top speed until he hits empty and collapses. Might be better to just wait until he stops flailing around before we drag him back in here to finish the install."

"Oooh. Well, I'll go after him anyway to make sure he doesn't hurt himself too badly," Starrunner offered.

"If you'd like." Bonesaw reached behind him, and drew out a small hand blaster that he normally kept hidden under the hood of his altmode. "Here. It'll be dangerous to go alone."

Starrunner took the blaster gladly, and slotted it into her magnetized hip holster. "What about the wiggly?" she asked.

"Hm? Oh, that. I'll tell you about it when you get back," Bonesaw assured her with a flap of his hand. "I still need to look it up on a fauna directory as soon as the Cortex network is back online. That jolt knocked out a dish or a cable somewhere."

And with that, Starrunner strode out of the dishevelled office and out into the red-lit maze beyond.


	11. Chapter 11: Vengeful Ghost

**Chapter 11: Fire them before they fire you**

"What was that?" Twofist panted. He clung to a nearby girder, in case anything else tore in through the walls and tried to suck him out into space.

By then, he and Artemia had managed to re-enter the main complex through the airlock which had not been damaged when the connecting corridor had been torn apart by the massive decompression earlier. But when a great tremor suddenly struck the station, bits of piping began to rattle loose, and a small section of ceiling came down. Fortunately, Artemia had punched him out of the way, much to Twofist's relief and dismay.

"That was me saving your pointless life!" Artemia spat at him. "Now get down from there before you fall on your skid, you idiot!"

Reluctantly, Twofist released his girder one hand at a time, and gently set one foot and then the other onto the floor, which hadn't been all that far away the whole time.

"Sorry, self preserving protocol there," he coughed self-consciously, as he stood back up again. "For some reason I don't mind you hitting me, even though I don't know why. But I was talking about that earthquake there, or moonquake, whatever. I think something big must've gone down at the refinery. Maybe they blew it up."

"Maybe," Artemia muttered, her optics narrowing. "We're gonna head down to the launch pad, grab a transport, and then we're getting the Pit out of here. Now get up and move, or I'm leaving you behind, wench."

"But those guys will be all over- wait, did you just call me a wench?" Twofist retorted, as Artemia stalked off down the corridor. Twofist jogged along after her with a skeptical look on his face. "Do you... even know what that means?"

"Yes. It means you're an idiot," Artemia huffed. She had lost both weapons now, but wasn't daunted yet. All she needed to do was to find another unsuspecting goon - one of _Turbogear's_ goons, she reminded herself - and then she'd simply murder him and take his gun. In fact, that was what Accounting had been like, except instead of killing people for firearms, she merely destroyed her opponents' egoes and stole their jobs.

"Actually, a wench is... a female, of the swill-serving persuasion," Twofist tried to explain, as he continued pacing to catch up with Artemia's longer stride. "Y'know. A bar slut."

"Yes, and that's exactly what you are," Artemia replied dryly. "You're a lower lifeform. Also, a slut."

"I'm not a- look, the word doesn't mean what you think it means," Twofist insisted, emphasizing with his hands. "And-and I'm not a slut! Why are you calling me a slut?"

"Because YOU and Turbogear have been COLLUDING with- _pirates_," Artemia spat, treating the word like offal. "The only reason why you're still alive is because I'm going to use you as a hostage to get off this damn rock."

Twofist stopped in his tracks and just stared at Artemia's backside. As much as he liked watching her leave...

"Are you serious?" he said, optics boggling in disbelief. "Me? And Pervogear? That's not me, Arty! I... we weren't colluding! I was selling Syk down at the refinery, and next thing I know there are armed goons running the planks, so Bugbear and Airbuzz and me ran back to the admin building to find out what was going on!"

"Right, and you were looting your office mates because you were _so_ concerned," Artemia growled. She continued striding ahead without him.

Twofist eventually had to run to catch up to her again. "I don't collude! I sell enhancers!" he insisted again. "If I had anything to do with this, you think I'd be shot at by, by... Seekers? That guy was a Seeker jet! You really think I'd have anything to do with-"

Suddenly, Artemia's heel was in his gut, and shoving him back down the red-lit hall. Such was the force of her sudden mule kick that Twofist tumbled skid-over-teakettle backwards, and by the time he had stopped rolling, the air smelt of burnt steel again.

In a panic, Twofist scrambled back up to his feet again, prepared to transform and bolt, when he saw Artemia standing in the distance. There was a bright pink flash, and a splash of glowing purple on the floor under Artemia's foot. Beneath her heel was a body that flopped with the impact of the laser burst.

Twofist dragged a hand down his face. Okay, then. Artemia was a relentless, murdering ex-soldier who was probably going to kill him or abandon him the second he outlived his use. Yep.

"You scare me!" he shouted after her, as he dusted off his arms and knees. "Just wanted you to know that!"

"Shut up and grab his knife," Artemia sighed, as she kicked the pleading hand off her ankle. She then continued walking, now armed with a laser rifle under her remaining arm.

The dead mech was not a Seeker this time, but some land-bound APC mech with... a hole in his face, Twofist noticed, as he slouched on over for a look. He waved the sizzling smoke away and coughed. A knife, what knife? It took his roving optics a moment to find the vicious-looking hunting knife strapped to the mech's torso. With a few tugs, Twofist got the knife out of its casing, only to discover that the blade was the length of his forearm. He grimaced at his reflection in the well-polished blade.

"Artemia? You know I don't know how to use this either, right?" he called down the hall. "Arty?"

But Artemia had already turned the corner. Twofist debated running off without her, since she seemed intent on... killing anything in her way. But what if he accidentally ran into her, and she mistook him for one of the pirates? And how did she know Turbogear was behind all this?

Twofist continued to look indecisive until something, a strange sound, drifted down the tunnel. It was a long, drawn-out howl of some tortured animal, lost in the maze. Or so Twofist thought. The sound of it froze the fuel in his veins, and he shivered.

"Wha... what was that?" Twofist whispered, gripping his knife with both hands. "Arty... Arty, wait for me!"

And with that, Twofist took off after her, trailed by the spooky cry in the distance.

* * *

Meanwhile, the rest of Octane's rogue crew were roving about the station, wrecking and looting as space pirates were wont to do. But as Whetstone and Pylon were finding out, there wasn't much to loot besides office stationery.

"I don't get it," Pylon sighed, as he rifled through the drawers of a desk. "I mean, tipping a bank, sure, okay. Robbing a cruise ship, even better. But this dump? What's this place got that Octane wants so badly?"

Whetstone was looking through a pile of datapads, just looking for the sake of looking. "Beats me," the jetmech sighed, dully. "I mean, besides this scraggy ersatz energon, this place has got no strategic use as far as I can throw it."

"Huh?" Pylon glanced up and over at his cohort. "What's ersatz mean?"

"Fake energon, stupid," Whetstone said boredly. He threw one of his datapads at Pylon, which bounced off Pylon's head.

"Ow, hey!" Pylon protested. "Quit that! Why would they make fake stuff?"

"It's fuel, but it's not energon," Whetstone explained, as he slid one datapad out from his pile and hurled it at Pylon again. "It doesn't make ammo, it doesn't run equipment. But Transformers can process it for fuel, so I guess it's worth that much."

"Ow. Ow, Primus, will you stop that?" Pylon fended off the next few datapad projectiles with his forearm. "So we're here just to pillage second-rate fuel?"

"Seems like it. I think Octane's got something personal with the boss around here, too," Whetstone went on. He flicked a pen at Pylon this time. "Or he's doing something secret for Megatron, obtaining encryption codes or whatever."

"Now that sounds more like it." Pylon successfully deflected the pen, at least. "Y'know, more official, and stuff. And what's with his pet spy running around with that other guy, what's his name, Rushhour?"

"Yeah, dunno. I think Turbogear gave him up to the medics to torture or something. What a sick a bastard," Whetstone sighed, as he tossed the rest of his datapads over his shoulder. "Also sounds like something personal."

"Oh Primus, that little speech he gave?" Pylon chortled. "Like he was some kind of movie villain? What a jerkoff."

"Yeah, until the little guy bit you," Whetstone pointed out.

"Yeah, the little scragger," Pylon muttered darkly. He absently rubbed his arm, where Rush had left marks on the paint. "Anyway. What a waste of time," he complained. "I wish this place had, like... money, or something. Currency. Heck, even weapons would be pretty good. I'd even settle for for some por-"

And that was when the sound came. Like the howl of some strangled beast, it moaned and shrieked up from the corridor just outside of the open office door.

Instantly, Whetstone's wings hitched up in alarm and Pylon leapt back up to his feet, his doorwings flicking up in terror.

"Wh-what was that?" stammered Pylon, throwing his glance towards the door.

Whetstone had drawn his weapon, and was listening intently. "Probably those losers we passed down the hallway," he grunted, optics narrowing. "Goofing around like idiots."

Nonetheless, both of them remained silent, listening intently. And then it came again, closer.

"It sounds like..." Pylon breathed, his face slack with awe. "Like...!"

The sound of laser fire could be heard now, followed by screaming. "Get him, get him!" voices shouted in the distance. "Open fire!"

"_YOU CAN'T FIRE ME!"_ something howled, _"I QUIIIT!"_

More voices screamed to a high-pitched cacophony of grinding metal and the revving roar of some high-powered machine weapon.

Pylon shuddered, and even stoic Whetstone withdrew warily.

"Pylon, go shut the door," Whetstone whispered.

"No, you go shut it!" Pylon hissed. "I'll cover you!"

But neither of them moved to approach the doorway as the horrible creature could be heard still slashing its way down the corridor with its screaming chainsaw.

_"WHERE ARE YOUR ACQUISITION FORMS, SOLDIER?"_ the monster bellowed. Laserfire burst in bright flashes against the walls out in the hallway.

A flurry of footsteps suddenly pounded past the open doorway. Someone tripped and fell, but no one stopped to retrieve him. The revving song of a chainsaw grew louder and louder.

"Holy scrap, he's crazy! Run away!" someone was yelling as they fled.

All Whetstone and Pylon could do was stare in mute horror as some fuel-covered creature suddenly flared into view, wielding what looked like a two-handed, heavy-duty medical saw with spinning teeth on its rotating blades.

_"THIS ISN'T STAMPED PROPERLY!"_ the creature roared as it swung its weapon down upon the hapless pirate on the floor. The unfortunate pirate with poor footing had only a second to scream before the saw smashed into his face. The saw ground into his optics and tore them out into a tornado of shattered glass and wires. The body of the pirate mech jerked and thrashed awkwardly as the monster bore the blades further down and down until it had cut into the chest, splitting open the breast plate and exploding all of its contents in an oily spray of fuel and coolant and glistening shrapnel.

Pylon opened his mouth and was about to yell something when Whetstone came up behind him and slapped a hand over his mouth to silence him. Whetstone however kept his own mouth shut too, but the both of them stood and watched.

The monster, by now covered in a greasy coat of spilled fuel and bits and pieces, then ripped its grinding chainsaw out of its victim with a splatter of fluid, and roared at the ceiling.

_"NOBODY DEALS __**ME**__ A PINK SLIP!"_ it screamed, before taking off down the corridor at a dead run.

It was a long time before Whetstone peeled his fingers off Pylon's face. It was an even longer moment before Pylon even dared to draw breath again.

"Was that-" he began, but Whetstone was already replying to him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I saw it too," he breathed.

Without a word, both pirates suddenly made a dash for the open doorway and frantically slammed on the button until the door swished shut. Then there were faint scraping, squealing sounds as heavy furniture was dragged across the floor and pushed up against it.


	12. Chapter 12: The Twitch

**Chapter 12: The Twitch**

The minor earthquake ended as abruptly as it began. Octane stumbled back and braced himself with one hand against a table, his optics wide in surprise as he prepared for potential aftershocks. Clutched in his other hand, the laser pistol was still smoking.

"What... was that," he growled, casting a long, hard glance at all the other optics pinned on him.

Scunge quickly bent his head down, but Turbogear wasn't even looking at him. "Sounds like... something at the refinery," Turbogear mumbled, looking vaguely distracted. Numerous reports were being commed back and forth, and he was trying to listen in on the most coherent one.

"Well, what is it?!" Octane snapped at him. He had obviously opted to close all channels except to those of his own men, and there was evidently no one reporting directly to him. Silently he snapped at one of his sergeants, who was not responding.

"I dunno!" Turbogear snarled back. "A gas leak, maybe? Call off your men and get them the Pit outta there before they start something irreversible!" Like a plant meltdown. Turbogear's tanks felt like they desperately wanted to invert themselves.

"Don't you tell me what to do!" Octane spat, as he shoved himself off the edge of the table. Standing at his full height, the jet tanker loomed over Turbogear, but Turbogear had faced taller, bigger things in the past, and he wasn't about to let Octane get into his face. In the background, Scunge began hurriedly packing his things.

"Hey! Hello, contractor here!" Turbogear seethed up at him, as he stabbed a thumb at himself. "Now that you've gone and KILLED my boss, our contract's over! Done! Finite! Now get the frell off _my base_!"

Something in Octane's vision tweaked, and he was quite certain it was the physical sensation of his temper snapping in half like a dry twig.

"YOUR base? Oh, I don't think so...!" Octane growled, optic twitching.

But Turbogear was already watching the jet tanker's gun-hand. In an instant, the blue Decepticon lunged forward and tackled Octane to the floor with a heavy CLUNK, flailing one arm in an attempt to slap the gun out of Octane's hand. The sudden slug of metal hurling itself into metal caused Scunge to yelp and fall over his equipment in an effort to protect the Torturetron and to keep it from being crushed beneath the tons of rolling, angry mechs.

Although Octane was bigger and heavier than Turbo, he was not by any means a skilled brawler. He had experienced his fair share of barfights and wartime skirmishes, but most of it had involved running away or using team mates for cover. Usually he preferred to not be there at all, period. Turbogear however had spent half a lifetime in the muddy, reeking trenches of E-Stalsem, fighting members of his own unit more often than with the enemy. In the trenches there had been no place to run.

"MY base!" Turbogear howled as he reared back and slammed a heavy fist into Octane's face. "You lying-" Crack! "-sack of-" _Crack!_ "-scrap!"

Turbogear's fist came away with splintering shards of optic glass that glinted in an arc under the smoky office light. The sharp end of Octane's cheek developed knuckle-shaped indents.

In an effort to stop Turbogear from burying his fist any further into his left optic, Octane flung his arm up and with his laser pistol still in his hand, pistol-whipped Turbogear upside the head with the butt of the weapon. There was a ringing CLONK as chips of enamel paint flaked off Turbogear's helm on impact, and the jetbike-bot flinched with a dazed look. That was Octane's opportunity to retaliate.

"Geroff me!" Octane grunted as he thrashed Turbogear once more in the head with the butt of his laser pistol. "What the hell did you expect, you worthless-"

He did not even bother to finish his sentence while he lashed the length of the pistol over the back of Turbogear's neck. His other hand reached up to grip the muzzle of the weapon to close the loop, and with a grunt he slammed Turbogear downwards towards him. With a squawk, Turbogear found himself rammed facefirst into Octane's shoulder. The squawk turned into a breathless wheeze when Octane suddenly lurched forward, using his greater weight to roll the both of them over onto Turbogear's back, with Octane crushing him from on top.

"Get... off!" Turbogear croaked. He flailed his arms, trying to grab anything on Octane's back - a wing, a fin, anything - but Octane was so wide in the shoulders that Turbogear's upper arms were pinned, leaving his forearms windmilling uselessly.

Octane reared up and smashed his forehead downward into the brim of Turbogear's helm, denting that and himself on impact. But Turbogear's helm only act as a crumple zone, protecting the rest of his cranium from impact stress; this allowed him to crack a fist into Octane's jaw, wrenching the other mech's face away from himself. Hastily, Turbogear reached behind his head and snatched at the pistol pinned beneath it, but by then Octane had already recovered and was already whipping his fist into his face.

"What's the matter, scraphack?" Octane sneered as he brutally hammered his fist into Turbogear's face, the line of his cheek, his nose, his jaw. "Who's your boss now?!"

Turbogear struggled. Despite his attempts to fend off the blows with his arms, Octane was just stronger, and his fists merely glanced off Turbogear's forearms and rammed straight down into his face. The barrage of fists interrupted his vision with error alerts, and he could not see past the jolty lines of static that leapt and crackled as knuckles rammed into the cracking lenses of his optics.

But his legs were attempting a maneuver of their own. Turbogear's heels scraped frantically at the floor at first, but eventually he managed to hook one of his legs over the back of Octane's calf. Once the leg was locked, Turbogear fired one of his leg thrusters.

The result was a sudden flash and puff of black smoke, and a strangled howl from Octane. "You-!" He reared back to dodge Turbogear's left hook, only to smash his face into Turbogear's oncoming right hook.

Turbogear's successful hit drove into Octane's optic, shattering the yellow lens upon impact. Octane yowled in surprise and pain as the bulb node of the optical retina popped into glassy shards with a powder-soft _poff_.

"OH YOU MISERABLE CU-" Octane screeched, just before Turbogear popped another fist into his mouth.

With a thunderous, flaring burst, Turbogear fired both heel thrusters into the floor, the force of which jetted him straight out from Octane's winged bulk. Then it only took a hop and a skip to get him back up to his feet, and he was halfway to the door by the time Octane had stopped clutching his face long enough to spring back up and make chase.

"I'll fragging KILL YOU!" Octane roared at him, staggering sideways as he scrambled madly after the escaping indigo jetbike-mech.

Turbogear darted out the doorway, but stopped long enough to grab at the doorframe and swing himself halfway back in. He stuck his head back into the room and shouted, "You'll regret this!" He even shook a fist. "Once Rushlight finds you, you're dead! You hear me?! DEAD!"

With his depth perception impaired, Octane smashed his fist into the doorframe, narrowly missing Turbogear by a millimeter. By then Turbogear had gone, and was running pell-mell down the red-lit corridor. His shin-fins flashed like mirrors until he disappeared into the darkness.

Octane whipped back around, his wings flared upwards and frame practically puffed up in rage. "Scunge!" he snapped, "Stop fooling around and go after him!"

"Aww boss, I don't really do that kind of thug stuff-" Scunge began, but he was cut short by a sudden impulse to very quickly plant his face onto the floor. Which was just as well, because he managed to duck fast enough to dodge the table being hurled at him.

There was a startling smash as the table tipped over a projecting pile of debris and crashed into another pile further off.

"NOW!" Octane screamed at him. The socket missing an optic bled with dark, murky fuel and energon leakage down his pale face.

Scunge was out the door in an instant, lugging a small case of tools and his power drill with him. The Torturetron had been left behind on a tarp on the floor, along with the inert body of Lt-Colonel Feldspar still strapped to the chair, smoking quietly under the interrogation lamp.

Octane didn't even stop to watch Scunge take off. With a raging, thundercloud expression, the jet tanker spun around on his heel to retrieve his fallen weapon, and to see who and what else he could muster in terms of firepower. Radio comms flickered back and forth.

"And who the hell is Rushlight?" he growled at Feldspar. Feldspar of course made no reply, though a stray cable sticking out of the hole in his face sparked listlessly as if to comment that it didn't care either way.

Among Scunge's things, Octane found a crowbar, but nothing else useful. Primus damn everything, why didn't he assign a couple of guards at the doorway, he thought. He immediately commed the pirate pair that always sprang to mind whenever specific work needed to be done.

Empty threats, Octane decided belatedly as he turned about. Scunge would find Turbogear, and Octane would put a hole through the bastard spy's head, just like he did with Feldspar.

In a few strides, Octane was out the door just in time to miss the twitching of Feldspar's hand where the dead mech was still tied to the chair.


End file.
